Nadezhda Macey
Syntax
You are a perfect use of a word
A found poem, a boy rolling over into man
I want to hover by you a bee buzzing
by the runner beans on the lattice
dancing and sending for my sisters
to come, come this way
Insects play themselves, violins in the trees
cicadas shedding & shedding
lining the trunks of my childhood garden
the hot fabric of the sky weighed down
aching, heavy, blue
I dress the day in my mind
slick with memory
I light the wicks of the things I miss
baked beans & fish and chips
hills, tap water, my mother
A room of candles burning into June
February 14th
We rub across a pearl
black oil rainbow
the tip of winter glinting
white lilies and wet plaits of concrete seams.
My heart rustles, light through the kawakawa
a caterpillar looping closer
green in your sheets.
I cut the ribbon, we stop the fray
and roll the cat’s eye marble
the soft sea glass of your body
like a crystal ball.
You give me a misty south coast welcome
Ngake and Whātaitai and the birds still
crying through the waves.
I’m trying to be like you, more abstracted
further across the sea.
We roll off the hills, water like dogs chasing
we gather shells like opening eyelids
of the beach and wash them
silver slipping back into blood
pumping; an undercurrent you can feel
without entering.
Nadezhda Macey (she/her) is a poet and student in Te Whanganui-a-tara. She likes maps and murals. You can find more of her work in Starling 16 and 17, Symposia Mag, and in the Mansfield Short Story Award.