Sugar Magnolia Wilson is from the Far North of New Zealand and has been living in Wellington for six years. She has recently had work published in Turbine | Kapohau and Landfall. She co-edits Sweet Mammalian, a journal of New Zealand poetry, along with Hannah Mettner and Morgan Bach. Her first full-length collection of poetry, Because a woman’s heart is like a needle at the bottom of the ocean, will be published by AUP in March 2019.
Dear Sister,
I write to you this morning from my desk overlooking the garden. I can see Toby clearing grass from beside the path where I walked this morning. The way my shoes crunch upon the white pebbles on the path, I find it pleases me. There is something about our clothes, the taffeta, silks, stitched leather of our shoes, the sounds they make against the world, brushing upon things, rustling, that satisfies me so much and I do not know why. I wonder if any person from the past of the future has thought or will think the same. Oh, I like the way this stiff linen cuff feels brushing against this paper as I write, or, I love the sound of mother’s shoes clicking deeply on the cool marble of the passageway.
This morning the sun rose like jewellery, only, so much more than jewellery and less of that lonely feeling that gifts of precious stones and metals gives me. What is it with men and things. Here is this little transparent chunk of earth, stick it to your finger and now give me your person, your selfhood, your body, all the hours of the rest of your days. My heart belongs to mornings like this one. It was my own. The world was still and alive and I could hear men in the distance beginning to husband their animals. A far away dog was barking, someone calling out to her children.
©Magnolia Wilson
NZ Poetry Shelf 