Coin slot

I was sure this could start somewhere. It felt like it should. I connect into the above skull river. I pull the water down with my bare hands. I take it in through a coin slot in my scalp and it comes, it comes out my fingertips. I can exaggerate the shape of my hands by shaking them until they lengthen and become lithe. I am become monsterish through little actions like this. Little shake of the hand. Little click of the wrist. Little by little into the full monster. The full creation. The river wrapping around me. I wear it like a little cape, a little effort to look like something. We hear it. The sound of each other. Both of us rushing, me with blood, the river with whatever fills it. Would we say stars? Or water? The entire knowledge of all sentient life? Something else? I don’t know what the river contains, only that it is. And that I’m locked into it, against it, alongside it, it is me the monster and this river, loud. My legs make up two thirds of my size as I step across streets, over the top of houses, always in pursuit of this fucking river because it hides from me. I am hidden from it. Raking my fingers through dirt to find wetness. Connecting to plate tectonics seeking pressure as revelation. Where is the aquifer within when you need it. Born into a water sign. Chasing waterfalls. Dowsing with a stick I personally picked. There’s a rhythm to it but this isn’t it. We wake. We sleep. We wake again. It comes and goes. The blood I can sometimes hear rushing in my ears. The long fingers are less dexterous than one might think. There is suddenly a sheen of dew. A rivulet. One large tear worth of wetness. The coin slot opens in hope. A stick insect like finger or two twitches. You know that moment as the heavy rain starts. You know the sound of the water hitting ground.

Emma Barnes

Emma Barnes (Pākehā, they/them) lives in Aro Valley, Te Whanganui a Tara | Wellington. Their poetry has been published in journals including Landfall, Turbine | Kapohau, Cordite and Best New Zealand Poems (2008, 2010, 2021). They performed in Show Ponies in 2022 and 2023. They are the author of the poetry collections I Am in Bed with You (2021) and IF WE KNEW HOW TO WE WOULD (2025) as well as co-editor with Chris Tse of Out Here: An Anthology of Takatāpui and LGBTQIA+ Writers from Aotearoa (2021). They work in tech and spend a lot of time picking up heavy things and putting them back down again.