Rigor mortis
– for Thomas Lynch

It’s the greatest summer’s day
in existence.
My death stands out on the lawn
like a hero.
The sun has counted every blade:
green, green, green.
I’m as content as a cemetery
under snow.

I foresee a time when metaphor
and simile
will just be soil in the gut
of worms.

When the silver mirror melted
this morning
I must have been ready to give
myself up.

I can’t wait for the moon to rise,
a revelation: so ready to
die, so ready to live, sibilance
whistling in my tombstone
teeth, and my doctor dressed

up as an undertaker.

Jeffrey Paparoa Holman
from As big as a father, Steele Roberts 2002

I can barely remember where and when this came along. but it was there when I got together the manuscript for As big as a father, in 2002. Maybe it was written in London, when I worked in the 1990s at Waterstones, Charing Cross Road WC2H, with my Kiwi friend discovered there also – the amazing Dylan Horrocks. We both worked at  our arts in nearby cafés at lunch times, Dylan drawing comics, me writing short stories and poetry. Eventually, we both came home, to deliver.

Jeffrey

Jeffrey Paparoa Holman writes poetry, short fiction, history and memoir. He has published seven volumes of poetry; Best of Both Worlds (history, 2010); The Lost Pilot (memoir, 2013); Now When it Rains (memoir, 2017). As Big As A Father (Steele Roberts, 2002) was shortlisted in the Montana Book Awards, Poetry, 2003. Best of Both Worlds: the story of Elsdon Best and Tutakangahau (2010) was shortlisted in the Ernest Scott Prize, History (2011, Australia).

His most recent work, a family history, Lily, Oh Lily – Searching for a Nazi ghost (2024), is published by Canterbury University Press. He journeys in time on the trail of of his grandmother’s sister, Lily Hasenburg, married into German society at the turn of the twentieth century; and space, where he travels to Germany in 2014 to research her fate, an Englishwoman living through two world wars, citizen now of an enemy country.