Green for go

Take a child’s fixation with what’s
mine, mine, mine!
Imagine a man’s obsession with similar
flag planting magpie-ish sentiments,
no thought spared for sentimental attachments
(language, culture, land)

Studying Andrée’s Arctic balloon expedition
you have to marvel at how badly dressed they were,
how little they knew this landscape, its quick shifts,
the realities of nature. The map oh-so-white. Didn’t
factor in dense fog or heavy hoar frost, in their minds
only sun—eternal, spotless

Drag ropes ripping The Eagle ascended, leaving
them without steering power, still
ignorant about fourteen kilometres of stitches
perforating swathes of silk, letting out air, wheezing
through patches of varnish. Atmospheric pressure
squeezing life out of The Eagle’s inflated head

Would you be surprised it ended with a thud
two days later? No witnesses
(bar polar bears, seals, auks, puffins, terns—
sorry, there are no penguins)

Now here’s another desk explorer with billionaires
in his ears, world dominance starring his
eyes, curated snippets filed as truth.
A happy user of
unnecessary force
advanced weaponry
AI and modern technology

Take this island at the epicentre of great-power competition—
There’s hardly any population!
Do they have music, culture, books?
Do they even speak English?
What about McDonalds?
Well, we need this island very badly
the small man who casts a shadow
greater than himself said.

He thought it was green, must have
thought it was green for go even though
he’d always feared green flags.

He can’t see the stitching—
how it’s come undone along the perforation,
myriads of holes starring his own silhouette,
leaking ego, leaking humanity, leaking, leaking

Mikaela Nyman

Mikaela Nyman’s first poetry collection in English, The Anatomy of Sand, was published in 2025 by Te Herenga Waka University Press. Her two collections in Swedish were nominated for the Nordic Council Literature Prize in 2020 and 2024. Her second collection To get out of a riptide, you must move sideways (Ellips, 2023) was awarded a major prize by the Swedish Literary Society in Finland in 2024. Born in the autonomous, demilitarised Åland Islands in Finland, she co-edited Sista, Stanap Strong! A Vanuatu Women’s Anthology (THWUP, 2021) with Rebecca Tobo Olul-Hossen. In 2024, she was gifted a memorable year in Dunedin as the Robert Burns Fellow.