Aruna Bhakta
The Magician’s Daughter
this morning I glimpsed myself in the windowpane as my
grandmother, splintering ribs and
sharpened shoulder blades and a crescent-moon nose
her unused language dangling its legs down my
windpipe
but I am a magician’s daughter
leaving my sari behind the emerald curtain and emerging
as hannah montana
I am a mermaid in a circus tank, a half
daughter
a half girl a half here a half there a half gone
and there is a weight to all these thoughts, like
when I was born my name was chosen
by how it fit in a white mouth;
I have spent my whole life
being easy to pronounce
to eat
to swallow
to digest
and when we were nine claudia
made her hair silver with lemon juice and I wanted
to bathe in it so it would give me silver skin
and my grandparents spent months
in the wooden belly of a whale and
never once saw the ocean
but I spend every summer drunk on the beach in
a cherry-print bikini
all this lives, swarming and white-hot like
citrus, jasmine, pepper, bees
in my grandmother’s nose that I see in the window
I am a magician’s daughter,
I will cut myself in half again soon but for now
I am her, once again
Little Miss Apocalypse
this scene begins at seven-fifty-six the night
before the apocalypse:
there is a witchery in Martinborough tonight —
nymphs hunt under an expired moon,
ghosts live in mailboxes
and five girls move into a cottage on Tui Street
we pull the suitcases into the living room and
wear each other’s clothes until we never knew who we were —
are those my freckles on her cheeks? or stardust?
we paint each other with glow-in-the-dark paint
so we can know each other at night and Tessa is green
like seaweed like olives in jars at the deli like the school field under bare feet
and Kate is blue like electricity like blue heart emojis like low-rise jeans
and Izzy is yellow like bonfires
like sunlight on the bottom of a pool like January and Joy is red like the
ribbon around her neck in that club
like vampire eyes like Valentine’s Day
we watch Jennifer’s Body projected on a sheet
that droops like a ghost and we imagine
what it would be like to eat a boy or to look like Megan Fox
we text by candlelight
we draw cards with nail-bitten fingers and
the future reads: revelation
so when the twilight grows plum-dark and wistful and
disappears into august like morning light like water through our fingers
like that girl who never came home
none of us bats an eye; we believe in this power feverishly —
after all, is there anything more apocalyptic than girlhood?
we stop,
turn towards the once-twilight and peer through painted eyes
somewhere in the background Amanda Seyfried grins:
hell is a teenage girl
Aruna Bhakta (she/her) graduated from Te Herenga Waka in 2022 with an Honours Degree in Classical Studies. She currently works in New Plymouth and spends her time researching museum artefacts and reading in the park.