sarah lawrence
something’s melting; it’s snowing again
i’m sorry, it’s seven-oh-two & i’ve kept you waiting,
don’t shake your head, unzip your eyebrows, i see you
shrinking in your jacket. did you know i was born late, born
in a snowstorm in cambridge...& you were born too, what a
dazzling coincidence! if i’ve kept you waiting, that means
i’ve kept you, which, do you think that’s sweet? no? well
you know, a state of being is a state of waiting...but you
can enjoy the waiting if you’d like, or alternatively, you
can despise the waiting & write poetry. do you think
one day you’ll get married & fill the street with daisies,
or put some doves in a cage, or city pigeons you found on
the roof, & pretend that love is not part of the waiting, too?
when my dad was living in a hotel, on his birthday we
sent him this big expensive chocolate cake, like the
consolation prize for losing a game of family. when something
is radioactive, it keeps poking tiny holes in people, until
one day all their hair falls out & they can’t stand up,
so they have to roll to work & ask the barber for a combover &
there’s this formula you can use to calculate when
radioactive matter is only thirty-seven percent of what it used to be
but, if you wanted, you could just tell me. is it worth the waiting?
if i could manage to believe in science AND sinatra
maybe i could become an astronaut. then i’d fly to the moon
without loving at all. yes, i’m sorry we’re waiting. how do you
fill a graveyard with living things? it just seems so cruel.
natural disasters
two years before, i sent Emily flying
on the see-saw in ōtautahi elmwood park; screeching, i
sank into the tyre like a stone while
her kebab legs buckled up, up,
defied gravity for a single soaring second...
when denim hit metal with a clap of thunder-thud.
she tried to laugh, then she cried,
hands clenched, showed the trees
the white-hot scar in the spiderwebs of her knuckles where
her brother once tried to cut her finger off with safety scissors;
i understood him then, trying to laugh, sirens
all the way to the GP, six-year-old skin quivering with the discovery that
people are not
paper
*
some lady opened a bookstore on the street by my house
which i thought was brave, like that time my mum told me
‘we need two generations for this sort of thing’
when i bought three whole books the lady looked
at me very strangely
said, ‘it’s good to read the classics’
*
the day it happened, on the bus
to rutherford’s den, Emily was showing me how
she could fit her whole raincoat in her pocket when the
bomb went off, so it goes, and we hit the floor.
later, trying to laugh, Emily showed me a new scar beneath her
eyebrow where her seat split her skin, the day
we didn’t split the atom
*
in school we were the reigning queens of
acorn trading, with bounty buried precious
in a sandpit grave. one morning, this kid stole all our acorns,
and tried to trade them, thinking we wouldn’t
notice, but we did, and we didn’t speak to that kid for
the rest of the year. another morning, the acorns
started sprouting, and we didn’t know who to yell at
*
we were trying to be newsworthy, Emily
holding a sign scrawled in crayon:
‘don’t be a fossil fool’, really sticking it to The Man
later, we sat, foolish, legs crossed, shaking in the central
library while The Man shut 51 books
it was in the new york times
*
the month the streets were empty
my sister and i took a photograph in the
same shop window every night to see if we would change, somehow,
and we didn’t, although some days i had toothpaste
on my shirt and once this big cargo truck drove past
and we swore at it, grinning
*
you’ll see me in a fairy-light glow, talking into
a can on a very long string, stretched, in fact, across the cook strait;
Emily is learning to fix people’s bodies
and i am learning to read a lot
which she thinks is brave
*
ten years later, we embrace in elmwood park, slipping into
the snakeskins of ourselves, prodding away at the old
dreamscape, we try, we do, but we both know
there are chestnuts under the leaves, and
paradise ducks nesting in the riverbanks, and
i have a raincoat in my pocket
love sonnets
cereal monogamist
you liked your toast with margarine and jam
i told you i remembered, and you smiled
i’d eat cornflakes, you’d show me ’90s bands
that was my favourite hour there for a while.
last night i tried this math problem in bed
& suddenly the math problem was love
if i keep taking calculus forever
i’ll crack the answer. did you know that once
i found this cactus sitting on the street
then threw out all my wily wildflowers
thought, this one i swear even i can keep
you’d call it lovely, in my favourite hours
& i’d make you tea with chocolate on the side
i poured it wrong. the hardy plant still died.
alone at the kingsland social
there is a pigeon flying at the glass
again, again, it hits the window pane
passers-by blink and giggle, footpath mass
sing quick umbrella elegies in rain. i know
i love you with that special paranoia
of being sure you’ve left something behind
in taxi cars, or kitchens, or street noises
or stretching raging oceans around rhyme.
i wonder what the bird sees in this room
perhaps a new dimension where to quit
is to want so hard you shatter into bloom.....
to try is to forget. love, i admit –
i am the pigeon, typing in the dark
but this you knew: clear café fishtank glass.
Sarah Lawrence has just finished her first year in Law and Arts at Victoria University. Hobbies include reading about witchcraft, eating chips and impersonating herself.