I invited some friends to share their poems.
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Storm leaves
She met someone else
tried to fight it
couldn't Read it… → -
Dear Camera (after Ben Cauchi)
You go unseen in every shot,
a kestrel plummeting to the kill. ...
Sandi Sartorelli Read it… → -
There's an attitude you need for living here.
It's not resilience, although you might need that
as well. No, it's a kind of defiance. ...
Adrienne Jansen Read it… → -
there's an apple core going brown
by the books beside the empty glass
of red wine, sediment like blood spilled ...
Maggie Rainey-Smith Read it… → -
Take the threads of years
Twist them round each other ...
Sarah Delahunty Read it… → -
I am a lookout,
a code breaker,
a liar ...
Renée Read it… → -
Kia ora koutou, Once upon a time a doctor said to me, ‘You have entered Tiger Country, Renée, and when you least expect them, the tigers will come out.’ So I wrote a poem about tigers.We all have them, different tigers for different times. I have a few and sometimes they sleep and sometimes they wake up and snarl. You… Read it… →
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Some history from the tender country
Waxy brown parcels tied with string
are delivered and collected from the house ...
Mary-Jane Duffy Read it… → -
The petrol gauge is not working. The radiator
leaks and when it’s removed looks like a harp
an angel would trade in. ‘Two words, madam’ ...
Elizabeth Smither Read it… → -
We sit around the table pour
another beer or wine
Silent embroidered shawl ...
Renée Read it… → -
Husbands are a necessary part of the design
God drew on his sketch pad, Sister Joseph tells you ...
Renée Read it… → -
Daughter of Eve Seeks Son of Lilith
Once bitten you have lost ...
Sandi Sartorelli Read it… → -
Once upon a time when the earth was blue
and the cross turned over and the grey stars sighed
I played Etta James and I thought of you
Renée
Read it… → -
measured by a ready wreckoner’s yard, so what?
late for a wretched Wreckoner’s Ball, that’s all,
wrote off in a wreckoner’s clammed-up claws, ...
Chris L Taylor Read it… → -
My Asherah, I made a shrine for you in the old fire pit under the tree
but I did not leave you. I wasn't sure how you would weather
Sandi Sartorelli Read it… → -
The map, my friend, a mishmash of lines and cracks
uncharted territory where rivers bleed onyx seas ...
Renée Read it… → -
Coming back ...
Chris L. Taylor Read it… → -
You moved me along, the nausea passed, the native grasses at close quarters. ...
Hinemoana Baker Read it… → -
Ah / Shit / Ive done it ...
Carol Markwell Read it… → -
I'm thinking now, I shouldn't have
been so forthright. I should've
simpered out my love like my ...
Carol Markwell Read it… → -
I wonder now I know your name
whether it was that far-away sound
always just beyond me, ...
Richard Langston Read it… → -
On my front step
sleepy-eyed
the dazzle of early morning sun ...
Miriam Richardson Read it… → -
A quite ordinary funeral the corpse
Unknown to the priest. The twety-third psalm
The readings by serious businessmen ...
Elizabeth Smither Read it… → -
He's angry at the over- ripe sun, the greedy way she drinks it all in
points out pedestrians on drips, the children with dengue fever ...
Maggie Rainey-Smith Read it… → -
Tread slow around the old house
let the bones of this moment stir, set ...
Renée Read it… → -
Your eyes are narrowed to keep out the intrusive sun
your mouth a line closed against God, life, a stone
caught in your sensible black shoe ...
Renée Read it… → -
Let’s say that we are close to reaching 1 degree of global warming. Let’s say that, if we continue to use our present oil, ...
Dinah Hawken Read it… → -
Chemotherapy is like killing the last predator
in a bird sanctuary on a small island ...
Karen Peterson Butterworth Read it… → -
The road continues on
but here's where we turn
Sarah Delahunuty Read it… → -
Today, I almost picked up the phone to call...
Rewa Morgan Read it… → -
It will have to go, they said,
as if it could pack up its roots
and move to another country ...
Carol Markwell Read it… → -
I have smashed the
Concrete idols ...
Carol Markwell Read it… → -
The cop
tall, dark, irksome
notes the bottle... Read it… → -
We do yoga together
You stretch your arm carefully
so as not to pull on your scar
Sarah Delahunty Read it… → -
melted the butter first, one hundred grams ...
by Christopher L. Taylor Read it… → -
We three advance across the uneven field
to where Alice, the horse, with one white sock ...
Elizabeth Smither Read it… → -
O how we dance, O how we dance
round and round and round and round ...
Renée Read it… → -
Here is my closed mouth smiley hat —
comes in handy when shaking hands
with strangers. ...
Renée Read it… → -
Snakes and a man in the sidewinding light
between bumper and lamp-post, an instant
of gorgon’s delight as she turns his eye, ...
Sandi Sartorelli Read it… → -
Menopause (inspired by an essay by Ursula K. Le Guin ‘The Space Crone’ 1976)
Ursula urges me to
become a Crone
to not bemoan
my declining hormones Read it… → -
'Afterwards we got drenching summer rain / a
blackbird hopped out onto the backyard / all chest &
pluck / we stayed inside / watched the rain slant the ...
Richard Langston Read it… → -
As a direct result of all my reading, I make up ten rules to guide me in my own research. ...
Lynn Jenner Read it… → -
Janette’s getting married in five years.
She says it in my kitchen, palms cupped
warm round the blue-rimmed mug I bought last . ...
Carol Markwell Read it… → -
look up a map
touch a morning
see the rail track ...
Renée Read it… → -
Russell is a pony-tailed man,
bearded, grey, jacketed in leather.
A Harley parked in the drive. ...
Bill Nelson Read it… → -
It has been a pleasant evening
sipped from fine-cut crystal
tasted from gleaming silver ...
Claire Matthewson Read it… → -
Please,
she whispers
to the Universe. ...
Naomi Taylor Read it… → -
I walk where embers hiss and sigh
I hear the voices call of theft
I see the bird rise in the sky ...
Renée Read it… → -
Through our back gate five steaming horses
wild and scary and thrilling. ..
Patricia Donovan Read it… → -
Below me, cars do their morning run,
ambulances practice scales, ...
Renée Read it… → -
Our mother made all our clothes
do you remember
winceyette, sea island cotton, molleton ...
Carol Markwell Read it… → -
Darling, I will only do death ..
Sandi Sartorelli Read it… → -
If Renee Vivian had written a sonnet to Natalie Barney
Mry-Jane Duffy Read it… → -
Mountain, I sing that my place to stand is
defined by your shadow and your rising
is a natural boundary to my world. ...
Sandi Sartorelli Read it… → -
There was a billionaire
who appeared as a dazzling series of zeros.
He placed coins on our tongues.
Read it… → -
She wants to go out slanted
with her feet in leaves.
She looks through her stringy hair ...
Adrienne Jansen Read it… → -
She hoards tools.
She has screwdrivers,
chisels, hammers, saws, ...
Adrienne Jansen Read it… → -
My childhood is coloured cobalt, aquamarine,
gamboge and vermilion framed in gold leaf.
There are no family fights, rain that sheets down for days, ...
Karen Peterson Butterworth Read it… → -
A rooster crowed – the villagers in their black dresses
and tata, their black suits, white white shirts,
the flower of their devotion. A pig ambled in the rain. ...
Richard Langston Read it… → -
If there was somewhere to be safe
I would have found it long ago
made up my fire and crouched there. ...
Sarah Delahunty Read it… → -
The mainland is rendered down
silvers and is gone. ...
Lynn Davidson Read it… → -
blue-grey, a silvering / of light and feathers / empty ...
Hinemoana Baker and Christine White Read it… → -
'They'll let you down' she says. 'If there's one thing
you'll find out it's that they don't care a jot.'
I take another sip of gin. 'What?' ...
Carol Markwell Read it… → -
She remembers him waving
He fixed the lemon tree with salt Read it… → -
wish I could sing you lady ...
Rachel McAlpine Read it… → -
Our mother would say,
'The blessed thing is stuck,
Richard Langston Read it… → -
Each morning in the small hours
my mother pads from bed and back ...
Elizabeth Smither Read it… → -
O Palmerston North Hopwood Clock Tower
you have a new hat on ...
Carol Markwell Read it… → -
On this aquamarine and citrus morning
you don't deserve to look so glorious,
but you do, you Dorian Grey of cities. ...
Natasha Dennerstein Read it… → -
Snakes and a man in the sidewinding light
between bumper and lamp-post, an instant
of gorgon's delight as she turns his eye, ...
Sandi Sartorelli Read it… → -
Gabriel
Maine Coon Cats are (allegedly) cuddly
but Gabriel missed that gene. He's a
medium –size tiger in a cat's body, sly,
cunning, thinks he's smarter than me.
He might be right.
Read it… → -
He is detained in bed waiting for dawn to break, the shards of morning. Patrick lies far from the herd, an excommunicate from the underworld ...
Sandi Sartorelli Read it… → -
Why you write.... Poetry pips ... Somewhere a poet...
Rachel McAlpine Read it… → -
1. Wear your old jeans. Wear the matted navy jumper that is too short in the arms, and yourt hair in jagged waves that might drop intrepid surfers. Your bones will be a metronome for time spent waiting. ...
Tulia Thompson Read it… → -
rivers bleed
onyx seas
weave
secrets
whisper songs
Renée Read it… → -
She brings the salad (green beans, red peppers, garlic
pine nuts),we drink red wine, talk about how what is given—
land, a heart, is forever, this year, next year, sometime, never ...
Renée Read it… → -
She wore a second-hand, button-through frock covered in rosebuds ...
Maggie Rainey-Smith Read it… → -
‘They’ll let you down’ she says. ‘If there’s one thing...
Carol Markwell Read it… → -
At Antarctica
dawn in middle night ...
Robynanne Milford Read it… → -
Just before locomotion
you are the fattest cherub
on the tallest ceiling
in the best basilica.
Elizabeth Smither Read it… → -
Her hands hover over the fruit
She picks up a pear, half turns ...
Sarah Delahunty Read it… →
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A Cortége of Daughters
A quite ordinary funeral the corpse
Unknown to the priest. The twety-third psalm
The readings by serious businessmen
One who nearly tripped on the unnacustomed pew
The kneelers and the sitters like sheep and goats.But by some prior determination a row
Of daughters and daughters-in-law rose
To act as pallbearers instead of men
All of even height and beautiful
One wore in her hair a black and white striped bow.And in the midst of their queenliness
One in dark flowered silk, the corpse
Had become a man before they reached porch
So loved he his own dark barge
Which their slow moving steps rowed
As a dark lake is sometimes surrounded by irises.Elizabeth Smither