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Poetry Shelf Monday Poem: Paranormal Phenomenon by Richard Reeve

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Paranormal Phenomenon

My garden’s gum tree, creaking above my roof,
is nearly normal. By which I mean
the sound branches make when hit by weather,
rain, wind and the like, whinge of the limbs
bending to a gale, drizzle, or stillness
when the nut flowers bring in the bees.
All this is normal, scarcely worth commentary,

and yet, also, mysterious.

99 percent of all paranormal phenomena involve sticks,
shufflings in the wind, storms, shadows.
Sound or form first associated, then disassociated,
inflating superstition. The fact of weather.
99 percent of such occurrences being quietly remarkable,
the sound of the gum is quietly remarkable
(the one percent a mere statistic).

Richard Reeve


Richard Reeve is the author of seven collections of poetry, published variously by Auckland University Press, Otago University Press and Maungatua Press. His most recent publication, About Now, was published by Maungatua Press in 2024. A new collection is forthcoming. Reeve lives at Warrington, to the north of Dunedin, with his partner Octavia, cat Lionel, some hedgehogs, a selection of introduced bird species and a few mice.

Poetry Shelf Monday Poem: ‘doe-eyed’ by Zia Ravenscroft

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doe-eyed


we’re all just kids riding bikes through
quiet neighbourhoods where all the houses
are identical and the colour of sand.
we’re all just the distant sounds of laughter,
sometimes crying.
we’re all just streetlights, we’re all trying
not to blind each other when we open
our mouths and sometimes we’re candles
and other times we’re the splash of water
and the flood.
we don’t mean to do this to each other
turn ourselves into headlights
and everyone else into deer.
we don’t mean to make the world
an open wound, but sometimes you’ll look
down and see the sharp thing in your own
hand. use your mouth or shut it then.
turn on veranda-light, open your hand.
we’re waking up together, we’re each other’s
alarm clocks, we’re the painted chain-link
fences, we’re the scream of love, we’re standing
up all the way down hill on bicycles we never
owned but somehow made out of all this red.

Zia Ravenscroft

Zia Ravenscroft is a writer, actor, and drag king currently studying in Te Whanganui-a-Tara. He has previously been published in Starling, Cordite, and Circular among others, and performed at the National Poetry Slam Finals in 2023. They like writing about boys and bodies and boys’ bodies. 

Poetry Shelf Monday Poem: ‘volume turned down to 7’ by Kay McKenzie Cooke

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volume turned down to 7

Slowly it dawns, the need to listen
to the faint grief of a mourning cello, the sky’s blue jug
pouring out a second helping of custard sun,
this music that vies with a lost bee and a kereru’s three-note
flight path beyond our open door. Nick Tipping’s low voice,
sounding like a pilot’s announcement: Enjoy this shadow of trees,
this laughter of water. From among a shock of leaves, a tūī’s semi-colon,
a piano note, a caught dragonfly cupped in the soft sweat of a child’s hand.
The lowest black key repeating—a lawnmower four houses down.
Nick corrects himself, ‘Rachmaninoff,’ he says.
My grandson comes down to visit from upstairs, says,
‘I thought you were still in bed.’
No. I’m here just awake and no more even though
it’s now past noon. I’m here taking it all in. The Concert Programme
in summer, volume turned down to 7, the fret of a pīwakawaka. No.
I stand corrected. Vaughan Williams’ Lark Ascending.

Kay McKenzie Cooke

Although Kay McKenzie Cooke (Waitaha, Kāti Māmoe, Kāi Tahu) lives in Ōtepoti Dunedin, she continues to hold a deep connection to Murihiku Southland, the province where she was born. She is the author of four poetry collections and three novels.

Poetry Shelf Monday Poem: WILD SWANS AT PAEKĀKĀRIKI by Murray Edmond

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WILD SWANS AT PAEKĀKĀRIKI

‘old altars will be overturned’
Jacqui Sturm, ‘Good Friday’

Toward Raumati in a butter-yellow
dawn five black swans swim north
while a camper-van hurtles south
down The Parade, a message writ
above the cab: JESUS IS COMING.
From one house a Ukrainian flag,
from another the United Tribes
of 1835. And the swans progress.

There’s a poem on a plaque on a
post that stands beside the sea
that warns us all: ‘Old altars
will be overturned.” A boy runs
round and round Campbell Park.
He wants to be Christian Cullen.
The septic tank truck lumbers by
after Jesus who’s departing fast.

Did ever a day dawn like this
on Papa-tū-ā-nuku? The answer
to that common question is
always different, always correct.
The mind is a beach, or words to
that effect, the poem says. Infinite.
Hour by hour the sand shifts and shifts.
And the swans have already flown.

Murray Edmond

Murray Edmond: born Kirikiriroa 1949; lives in Glen Eden, Tāmaki-makau-rau. Recent publications: Time to Make a Song and Dance: Cultural Revolt in Auckland in the 1960s (Atuanui Press,  2021) – cultural history; FARCE and Sandbank Sonnets: A Memoir, (Compound Press, 2022) – 2 books of poems; Aucklanders (Lasavia, 2023), a book of 15 short stories.

Poetry Shelf Monday Poem – SIDE A: MANIFESTO and SIDE B: MANIFESTEAUX by Tate Fountain

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SIDE A: MANIFESTO

  1.  I WILL NOT DWELL IN THE CAUSEWAYS OF ANGUISH.

  2.  I WILL NOT DWELL IN THE CAUSEWAYS OF ANGUISH AND CALL THEM DREAMS.

  3. WE WILL CELEBRATE THE PETALS OF THE SPIDER CHRYSANTHEMUM, EMBRACING IN THREE DIMENSIONS, EACH AS A THICK IMPASTO STROKE REACHING FURTHER INTO THE WORLD THAN ANY MORTAL PAINTER COULD MANIFEST, DUSTED WITH TRACKS OF PIGMENT ALMOST-MIXED AND OF GREATER DIVINITY FOR IT—THE VIEW STILL AND EXPLODED.

  4. EVERYTHING WILL BE ALRIGHT, ACTUALLY—IF YOU HOLD TO THIS KNOWLEDGE AND ARE TENACIOUS ABOUT YOUR LIFE.

  5. I WILL NOT DWELL IN THE CAUSEWAYS OF ANGUISH.

  6. I WILL NOT DWELL IN THE CAUSEWAYS OF ANGUISH AND CALL THEM GOD-GIVEN.

  7. YOU MUST FIND THE THING THAT SINGS TO YOU AND LET YOURSELF REJOICE IN THE MELODY.

  8. MY LIFE CAN BE REAL WITHOUT IT BEING CAPTURED. A YOUNG WOMAN WALKING DOWN KARANGAHAPE ROAD IN THE RAIN, BUNCHES OF FLOWERS FROM A PONSONBY GROCER CRADLED IN HER ARMS, IS JUST AS BEAUTIFUL WITHOUT BEING FLATTENED, FRAMED, AND HELD AT A REMOVE. SHE LIVES WITHOUT US HAVING SEEN HER.

  9. DIVE INTO THE HAVING. SEE HOW IT IMPACTS YOUR COMPULSION TO SPEAK.

  1. MY LIFE CAN BE REAL WITHOUT IT BEING CAPTURED. LET SOMEBODY BREATHE WORDS OF LOVE BEHIND A CLOSED DOOR AND RESIST THE URGE TO HAVE A LENS PHASE INTANGIBLY THROUGH THE WOOD. SET DOWN THE SCREENPLAY.

  2. MY LIFE CAN BE REAL WITHOUT IT BEING CAPTURED. ARE YOU IN LOVE OR DO YOU JUST WANT SOMEONE TO TEND TO IN THE SOFT BLUR OF A CROWD SHOT?

  3. MY LIFE CAN BE REAL WITHOUT IT BEING CAPTURED.

  4. MY LIFE IS REAL—THIS—NOW—AND IT IS HAPPENING.

  5. KEEP SOMETHING FOR YOURSELF—THE TROUBLE WITH SO EASILY DISGUISING THE EXERTION IS THAT THOSE YOU’RE SOOTHING DON’T GAUGE THE DEGREE OF YOUR EFFORTS.

  6. YOU DON’T HAVE TO LIVE WITH THIS CAVERNOUS THING INSIDE THAT YOU FEEL COMPELLED, FOR OTHERS’ SAKE, TO CRACK OPEN.

  7. WE WILL CELEBRATE THE HURTLING BEAT—THE SOARING CHORUS—THE WAILING SINGER—THE ALTO AT DUSK.

  8. YOU’RE NOT TRAPPED IN THIS. YOU’RE NOT TRAPPED AND ANYTHING CAN CHANGE AND NOTHING IS EVER WITHOUT HOPE.

  9. I WILL NOT DWELL IN THE CAUSEWAYS OF ANGUISH.

  10. MY LIFE CAN BE REAL WITHOUT IT BEING CAPTURED: SURGING ADRENALINE, A POP BEAT AND A THICK ANCHOR—THE THRUM, THE THRUM, THE THRUM, THE THRUM, THE THRUM. THE TURN AWAY. THE I’M BACK. THE HEY, BABY. THE—THE—THE—

  1. I WILL NOT DWELL ON EVERYTHING THAT COMES AFTER. I WILL FRONTLOAD THE GIFT AND THE DOING.

  2. WE WILL CELEBRATE CORIANDER AND MINT AND BASIL—CELEBRATE THE PARSLEY THAT USED TO GROW IN CLAY POTS AT THE VERGE WHERE YOUR GREAT-GRANDFATHER’S GARDEN MET THE STEPS OF THE HOUSE. YOU HAVE THE SAME HANDS NOW AS THOSE HE HELD. THE SAME IDIOSYNCRACIES AS ONCE KNOWN BY THOSE WHO HAVE CLOSEST LOVED YOU.

  3. WE WILL CELEBRATE THE REFRACTED LIGHT AS IT CASTS ITS SLANTING GLANCES.

  4. WE WILL BANISH SELF-DENIAL.

  5. I WILL DEFAULT TO COURAGE AND FAITH.

  6. I WILL EMBRACE FUN!!!!!!!!!!

  7. MY LIFE CAN BE REAL WITHOUT IT BEING CAPTURED.

  8. MY LIFE CAN BE REAL WITHOUT IT BEING CAPTURED. THE TENDER SLICING OF ANGEL TOMATOES ON THE SUMMER MORNING—THE GENTLE POOL OF OLIVE OIL—THE UNENCUMBERED ENOUGHNESS IN THE MEASURE OF MILK TO BE STEAMED.

  9. I WILL BE ACTIVE IN MY DEVOTION.

  1. WE WILL CELEBRATE THE FACT IT’S ALL AN ADVENTURE, EVERY SINGLE THING, AND ONE DAY IT WILL BE GONE.

  2. I WILL LET GO OF THE COMPULSION TO CARVE IMMEASURABLY DEEP GULFS BETWEEN MY PRESENT SITUATION AND A FORMLESS, IMAGINED SCENARIO WHEREIN MY LIFE IS SOMEHOW BETTER. I WILL LET GO OF ABANDONING MYSELF AND MY DEAREST ONES AND ALL THOSE I AM YET TO MEET. I WILL COME HOME TO MYSELF AND LOVE HER.

  3. I WILL BE GRATEFUL FOR EVERY HAND-UP AND KINDNESS.

  4. ALL OF US IN SUCH CIRCUMSTANCES WILL CELEBRATE OUR DAY-TO-DAY STABILITY AND THE SAFETY IT CAN BE SO EASY TO TAKE FOR GRANTED. WHEN WE FIND OURSELVES IN POSSESSION OF THIS INALIENABLE HUMAN RIGHT, NEEDLED PERHAPS BY DISSATISFACTION BUT NOT RAVAGED BY STATE-SANCTIONED EVIL, IT IS OUR DUTY TO STAND AS MEANINGFULLY AS WE CAN WITH THOSE WHOSE HUMANITY, HISTORY, AND FUTURE IS BEING TARGETED AND ERASED. WE MUST. HEAR ME: WE MUST.

  5. I WILL BE ACTIVE IN MY DEVOTION.

  6. I WILL RETIRE THE METHODS I TOOK UP TO SURVIVE MY ADOLESCENCE—I NEVER HAVE TO BE THAT GIRL AGAIN. INSTEAD—

  7. I WILL BE EXACTLY THE PERSON I’VE WAITED FOR, EVERY WOMAN I’VE LOOKED AT WITH ADMIRATION AND DELIGHT, WITH DEEP, DELICIOUS ASPIRATION. I HAVE THE MEANS NOW. I JUST HAVE TO RESPECT MYSELF ENOUGH TO BECOME HER.

  8. I WILL NOT DWELL IN THE CAUSEWAYS OF ANGUISH AND CALL IT BEING PREPARED.

  1. WE WILL CARVE OUR MOST FUNDAMENTAL TRUTHS INTO THE MATTER OF THIS AND ALL WORLDS, AND WE WILL NEVER LET IMPOSED DESPAIR WIN OUT.

  2. WE WILL MAKE MISTAKES AND GROW AND ALLOW THE SAME FOR OTHERS.

  3. WE WILL CELEBRATE PASSION AND RELIEF.

  4. I WILL COME HOME TO MYSELF AND LOVE HER.

  5. I WILL NOT DWELL IN THE CAUSEWAYS OF ANGUISH.

  6. I WILL COME HOME TO MYSELF AND LOVE HER.

 

 

SIDE B: MANIFESTEAUX

  1. The thing about the other side is that it fuckin’ rocks—

  2. —once you take the reins of your life and throw all that other shit out.

  3. It’s a wonder what the right pair of boots will do, even if they immediately crack a sole on the edge of the footpath. Even at the end of a month that has felt cursed to you. Even as everything in your body is screaming at you that it’s time.

  4. Throw it away! Throw it away! Let it mean more by letting it go! Throw it away!

  5. Don’t luxuriate! Let the tides lap at it! It’ll stay if it’s meant to! Here’s your real life, baby!

  6. BRIGHT BLEEDING TULIPS SPRAY CHRYSANTHEMUMS THE LONG LINE FOR THE MADELEINES THE CITRUS ZEST AND THE ELDERFLOWER THE OIL CLINGING TO THE ICING SUGAR THE BUFFETTING LATE SPRING WIND

  7. THE DIP OF YOUR COLLARBONE SMOKED LAVENDER ELECTRIC BLUE

  8. Loosen your grip! Open your hand!

  9. It’s all got a bit serious, hasn’t it!

  10. THE DIP OF YOUR COLLARBONE SMOKED LAVENDER ELECTRIC BLUE THE MONT BLANC DOWN THE ALLEYWAY ON A SUNNY DAY THE SQUARE LINES THE GEOMETRIC JAVA TILING THE SWEET DEEP EUCALYPTUS THE

  11. DEEP EU— ORANGE TU— ENOUGH LOVE HERE THAT THERE’S SOMETHING TO LOSE

  12. You owe it to yourself not to hesitate. Or else you owe it to yourself to power through. You owe it to yourself to be the version of yourself you wish you could be, the one you know you are at your best. Tip your head back and meet the rain. And meet it. And meet it. And—

  13. Most of the time what you’re scared of losing isn’t the thing itself anyway, just evidence that, for a time, you had it—and you did; and you do; but the past doesn’t exist anymore, just as the future doesn’t, hasn’t reached us yet; what can you put down on the way there? What preemptive punishment are you assigning to yourself in order to beat some hypothetical judge to the punch down the line? Let it go! And—

  14. I love you in words I love you aloud I love you waiting for the bus I love you incomprehensible I love you at the perfect time I love you with jitters I love you with your hair in a bun giving notes I love you and your dog who is in many ways a lot like me and vice versa I love you through all events I love you with shared pocket tissues I love you for the others you love I love you from 1.5m away to ensure we’re in focus I love your attentive baby I love your braids I love you at the football I love you unproofread I love you undone I love you I love

  15. THE UNEXPECTED GENEROUS GIFT NEVER ASKED FOR AND YET RECEIVED NEVER ASKED FOR OUT OF THE ASSUMPTION IT WOULD NOT BE GRANTED AND YET RECEIVED AND YET GIVEN WITH THE FULLNESS OF ANOTHER’S HEART

  16. AND NOTICE THE EXCITEMENT SPILLING OVER ACROSS THE TABLETOP FLOODING THE PICKLED FENNEL AND THE STRACCIATELLA THE CRUMBLED PISTACHIO AND THE SICILIAN OLIVES THE FOCACCIA AND THE ROSEMARY ALREADY OILED AND FLAKED WITH SALT AND THE UNREMARKED-UPON SHARED DESSERT

  17. WHAT MIGHT OTHERS TAKE AS SIGNS WHEN REALLY THE LOVE IS AT THE SURFACE WHEN REALLY THE LOVE IS THERE WHEN REALLY ALL I MEAN IS EXACTLY WHAT I AM SAYING TO YOU WHEN WE CAN SINK TWO SPOONS INTO THE CUT OF A CHEESECAKE TO TASTE OUR EQUAL SHARE OF BLISS AND I’M NOT TRYING TO TELEGRAPH ANYTHING ELSE AND WHAT IT MEANS IS THAT WE’RE HERE TOGETHER WHAT IT MEANS IS THAT WE’RE HERE TOGETHER WHAT IT MEANS IS THAT WE’RE HERE TOGETHER HERE RIGHT HERE FOR NOW THANK GOD

  18. One day, sickeningly soon, it’ll all change. You’ll have to find someone new to call on the way home from work, some new supermarket corner to be disappointed by, yet another new site to which hopes can be pinned. All those things you once wrote about with such matter-of-fact self-derision—well, in many ways you were right, trying to haul yourself up as you always have, closer to that great wish, that gnawing right place, that fantasy. But that other world will be one you build, which requires grace. A different flower market. A different, likely more demanding, commute.

  19. Another gentle gaze to fall into.

  20. For the better. For the better.

  21. LET THE IMAGES CASCADE

  22. If you tallied it up—took time and took stock—it’s likely that the list of material objects you’d deem essential to the base comforts of your life and your sense of self would be vanishingly small. To be told this makes you defensive, as though you’re being reprimanded, as though they’re being taken from you by another person’s thought experiment, as though you are without agency again. Unless you’re being actively threatened, resist this urge. The odds of the ‘you’ actually being you are rare. Act in good faith. Let the rest fall through your fingers, unclaimed, to find a better home.

  23. All those months. Years. Whispered, as in prayer: Give me something to run to. Give me something that makes it hard to leave. Better yet—baby, just go. You’re ready! You’ve done all the learning you need to! All the rest will roll on from here, underfoot and overhead and in your hands. So much unknown—and how electric is that!

  24. LET THE IMAGES CASCADE AS A BROOK AS A PERFUME AS A WATERFALL YOUR BEAUTIFUL FACE YOUR BREATHLESS LAUGH YOUR SINCERITY CAUGHT OFF GUARD YOUR HAIR UNKEMPT YOUR SOFT SHIRT CORNFLOWER BLUE MY BOOTS REPLACED THE CRYSTAL DESCANT THE FINAL RASPING JAGGED STONE AGAINST THE SMOOTHNESS OF YOUR VOICE THE PAPERED FRONDS

  25. THE IRIS BOLTING—

  26. ALL THOSE YEARS AS CONCERTINA. LET YOUR HEART REACH RIGHT THROUGH.

  27. You’ve got here and you love her: you love her; you love her; you love her.

  28. Here’s your real life, baby. Here’s your real life and your leitmotif and the themes you’ll never be cured of.

  29. STAND YOUR GROUND / EXHIBIT GRACE / REARRANGE YOUR PRIORITIES FOR THE WORLD YOU LIVE IN AND THE WORLD YOU HOPE, THROUGH ACTIVE COURSE, YOU’RE HEADED TO

  30. Enjoy it, this, everything—everyone through a warm lens, half-grained and smiling.

  31. BELIEVE IN SOMETHING BETTER, FULLER-HEARTED / REFRAME ABUNDANCE / ESCHEW DEPLETION / BE STEADFAST, CLEVER, FIERCELY KIND

  32. And you love her. Keep on proving it.

  33. AND THE IMAGES CASCADE

  34. And you’re here now.

  35. AND YOU HOLD THEM

  36. And you’re gonna love it here.

  37. AND YOU’RE HERE NOW

  38. And you love her.

  39. AND I’M GONNA LOVE IT HERE.

  40. And I’m here now.

  41. AND I LOVE HER / AND

  42. I’m gonna love it here.

Tate Fountain

Tate Fountain is a writer, editor, and creative producer. She has held programming, digital marketing, and strategy roles with Te Ahurei Toi o Tāmaki Auckland Arts Festival, Whānau Mārama New Zealand International Film Festival, and theatre and film company, extracurricular. She is the author of SHORT FILMS (Tender Press, 2022) and, as of September 2025, the editor of Starling, alongside Maddie Ballard. 

Poetry Shelf Monday Poem: Day’s End by Philomena Johnson

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Day’s End

The door to your room is open
to the corridor. Unused. I am alone
with you and as flat as a car battery
in lockdown. Yet all that is required
of this moment is for me to sit
by your bedside, hold the space
for your leaving. How many ancestors
have sat like this for their loved ones
after death? Behind us;fear, doubt,
grief. And yet still I sit, surrender to love
and only my hands are cold.

Philomena Johnson

Philomena Johnson graduated from The Hagley Writers’ Institute in 2017 where her portfolio was short-listed for the Margaret Mahy Award. Her poetry has appeared in The Quick Brown Dog, The London Grip, takahē, Fuego & a fine line; in the anthologies broken lines / in charcoal, Voiceprints 4 and The New Zealand Poetry Society Anthology 2024. Philomena won The John O’Connor First Book Award in 2024 for her manuscript not everything turns away, published by Sudden Valley Press. She lives where the river meets the sea right beside Te Ihutai Avon-Heathcote Estuary where she gets to walk by water every day. Philomena tutors at the Write On School for Young Writers.

Poetry Shelf Monday poem: essa may ranapiri’s ‘cracked or crackling or splitting down the sides’ 

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cracked or crackling or splitting down the sides 

(after Robert Sullivan’s ‘the crackling page’) 

if it is a fire then i know it is a fire if there is
warmth coming from that fire then it is
warmth in my mouth if my mouth is really
there and i know it is because it is open it is
open with fire streaming through my teeth
with heat lining my gums if my tongue is
moving in my mouth then sound is coming
 out if sound is coming out and surely i know
this because it is my mouth and my sound it is
a fire and i know it is a fire because of
how it burns 

essa may ranapiri (Ngaati Raukawa, Te Arawa, Ngaati Pukeko, Clan Gunn) is a poet who lives on Ngaati Wairere whenua on the island of Te Ika a Maaui. Author of ransack (VUP, 2019) and ECHIDNA (THWUP, 2022). They have a great love for language, LAND BACK and hot chips. They will write until they’re dead.

Poetry Shelf Monday Poem: Airini Beautrais ‘Wasted youth’

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Wasted youth

When you were clear-eyed
When your breasts burst out of you like blossoms
Your legs brown willow wands
Your hair like golden fire
You determined to be strange
Wore bad 80s tracksuits
Hair in a low ponytail tied with a scrunchie
Frumpy centre part and frizz, a frown
Under thick eyebrows
Wore old man pants
Hacked off your hair
Grew it back without grooming
Went to the ball in jandals and your grandma’s dress
Smelling like dust
Wore no bra and your mum’s old skivvy
Ate cake in the street
Made homemade dreadlocks
That stunk of skin and rotting thread
Went swimming in baggy boyleg trunks
Wore old sneakers from a skip bin
Smoked weed out of toilet rolls, apples,
plastic bottles, bits of bamboo
Threw all your costume jewellery in the clothing bin
Bought a pair of heels and never wore them
Gave them to the opshop
Slept with stoners, drunks, deadbeats and layabouts
Tried to get jobs in bare feet
Threw out everything made of leather
Wore thai fisherman pants and no undies
Refused to shave anything
Hacked your hair off again
Wore a bad 80s jacket
Dyed it patchy pink with DYLON cold
Cut your own bangs crooked
Got paint all over yourself
Wore clown pants
Carried everything in a dirty backpack
No spare change no time of day
Get lost, fuck off, nothing to see here
Like a tree dropping fruit
On the pavers of an abandoned courtyard

Airini Beautrais

Airini Beautrais lives in Whanganui and is the author of four poetry collections and a collection of short fiction. Her most recent poetry collection is Flow: Whanganui River Poems (VUP 2017). Bug Week and Other Stories recently won the Ockham NZ Book Fiction Award 2021.

Poetry Shelf Monday Poem: Neema Singh ‘Before Cara Delevingne’

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Before Cara Delevingne

Before Cara Delevingne
there was me
bushy-browed and proud
ready to walk down the catwalk
at Burwood Primary (down by the silver birches
where we played tree tag).

My eyebrows were so big and black they could knock out
the scrawny blonde kid at Intermediate,
the one who followed me and hit my legs
with a stick as I walked away
the one who called the only other brown girl in our class
skidmark.

My eyebrows were so wild they could radiate
waves of anger to the stranger at the bus stop
who said, “just smile, it’s not the end of the world”.

My eyebrows were so thick they punched through my voice
spoke so loudly that our Social Studies classroom rumbled
and everyone turned to listen.

In my dreams I have a sidekick –
with my beastly brows and Kajol’s unibrow
we are unstoppable.

Watch out tweezers and threaders and assorted brow shapers
we refuse to be plucked or trimmed into shape.
We bow only to the brow goddess
for long luscious fluffy brows.

Neema Singh

Neema Singh is a poet from Otāutāhi. Her work appears in Ko Aotearoa Tātou: We Are New Zealand(2020) and A Clear Dawn: New Asian Voices from Aotearoa New Zealand (2021) and she is currently working on her first collection of poetry. Neema is an experienced secondary school English teacher and holds a Master of Creative Writing from The University of Auckland.

Poetry Shelf Monday Poem: Karlo Mila’s ‘Stretch Marks’

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Stretch Marks

(20 Sep 2021)

On looking
at my naked body.
Knowing you will be
Looking. 

My body is ripped 
with silver linings.

Stretch marks. 

A weave of flex.
when my world got too big for me,
bearing babies
or burdens.

Stretch marks.
Invisible inked in skin.
Traces I needed to suddenly hide, 
Dive in, submerge into skin
safer unseen
from predator, prowler,
prey.

Oh luminous seal
with quick thick thighs
you dived underwater
thick-pelted, you hide,
Unseen.
Beached.

The loneliness of mammals. 

Alone in the deep blue deep.
Gestating to a saline rhythm .
All my own. 
All alone.
Skins grown
and shed.

Stretch marks.

A spider webbed weave
of vibrating threads.

Silks spun,
and undone.

The painful crack
of the shell of my understanding
breaking.

Growth.

Shedding full body armour
of weta skin, mine and others –
left behind –
with prayers on parting.

The coconut husk –
wringing cream and water
to try and see my future
in the milk of ancestral fluids.

The cocoon
of caterpillar storybooks
cake and pickle and pie,
so hungry.

The black butterflied chrysalis 
of love poetry written in my 30s.
That well written body indeed.

Here it is. 
Looking for love 
Same songs
different sounds.
Re-makes.
Re-takes.
Re-release. 
Re-mastered. 

I am always entranced 
by the acoustic version,
almost poetry. 

Sound healing.
Sexual healing.

I have been waiting for you so long,
Karakia even.
Hope. 
Asking.
Please.
It’s been too long.
Too alone.
I’m too human.

Across time and space,
He arrives, rain.
softly quoting hurricane.
He comes
in front of me,
sticky embryonic. 

Ultimate tōhu
of fertility. newness. rebirth.
remake. Remaster. 

We cross digital divides,
magic echnologies of presence.
wonder-lust, the marvellous.
the surreal sexuality of screens.

Missionary position
is my favourite way
to look at you.
Mirrored
Reflection 
You see
Beauty.
Speak it out loud.

Small scars on my body speak 
to trauma worn, scribbled on skin.
Stretch marks.
Paper thin.
Will you see me? My frailty?
Will you want? 

The small gods of chemistry
are king.

Will you want to
Come in?

Already I imagine you
in my mouth. Salty. Sweet. Big. Deep.

Oceanic. 

De-col. it’s everywhere.
Even in the seabed and foreshore of play… can I play? Can I say? 
Will you stay? 

Trust. in the 21st century 
of unconditional lovers
where it only lasts as long
as the longing.

I want nothing but.
Having settled for less.

I want no settler.
I want native. 
Natural. 
Ease. 

But these stretch marks speak to small anxieties, 
cartography of flesh.
I take a deep breath.
With these silver threads:
Tuia ki roto
Tuia ki waho
Tuia ki raro
Tuia ki runga

I stitch. I sew. I bind. 

Both of us
gasping for breath
in this ocean we have 
Leap of faithed 
into. 

Oh departing place 
of the spirits
watch over us.

Trust. 
Deepak recasts it as moving into the unknown 
beyond the prison of the past.
I listen to his lilting words:
“Today, I will step into the unknown.
I will relinquish the known.
By stepping into the unknown
I will enter in the field of unlimited possibilities.”

This is our place.
The field
beyond write and wrong.
Between hema and mata’u.
The field between other husband and other wife. 

The field between us.

There is no map-making to be had
using the small cursive script of the past. Prisons. 
I cast away my own incarcerated markings,
scribbles, notes, past poems, tiny wounded stories. 

I will give up the need to track-back
the way out
To tightly pencil a safe way in.
To re-make the boundaries.  To fortify.  
To try and control the way home.

I will leave the birds-eye to my ancestors,
keeping an ear open only
to the manu that tangi
keeping our forest alive.
This field.

I step, I step, 
Knowing I will be naked,
humbled, human, 
vulnerable, ashamed, 
afraid, and aroused,
I step, I step
into our field
of infinite possibility.

In this green grass,
I will lie
and meet you there.

Karlo Mila

Karlo Mila (MNZM) is an award winning Pasifika poet of Tongan / Palangi descent.  Her third poetry book “The Goddess Muscle” was released by Huia Publishers in 2020.  Her first book won the first best book award at the New Zealand literary awards in 2005.  She is a Mother, writer, researcher, creative, academic and activist.  Her day job is as the Programme Director of the Mana Moana Experience at Leadership New Zealand.  Karlo is the founder and creator of Mana Moana – aimed at elevating and harnessing indigenous Pacific knowledge for contemporary living and leadership. It is based on five years of postdoctoral research.  Karlo has three sons and lives in Auckland.