courtney sina meredith
stone house
Lay down or declare or exist in something permanent
they never get tired of petri dish rhetoric
setting halves setting wounds
likened old warm body
like Hotere or the cross
armed guard or Niue
women of Yemen
burning their veils
identity is a luxury
found in bright street chants
backyard fire amber glitter
alight! We are weaving our people into life
young hands milking the flowering son
his stars his holographic promise
young fe’e young partridge.
jettison
When you get to Melbourne you run into an old friend.
You continue to say ‘KL’ during your 6 days in Kuala Lumpur.
The idea of saffron overtakes you. Every morning is a clean slate.
Whoever greets you in Venice gets a firm handshake and a limerick about lambs.
No more coffee only whisky. It’s Europe so of course you’re smoking again.
The Valkyrie fountain continues to pour its heart out, for every day you are gone.
island
I said salt and chickens perhaps?
to keep me company on the island
when I’m without you
banished for the rest of my days.
At least you said, at the very least just play the game.
Goats?
I thought about baby goats
lining the horizon
no, you said
everything is for eating
which made me rethink
Shetland ponies
studying your palms
starred with flowers
I wondered, what about you?
What about applying the logic
of everything returning
as the plane would (apparently so)
raining down oysters
eye fillet medium rare
lychees and strawberries
depending on my wish list.
What about you and I
removing the heart of the other?
alphabetically
beginning with wounds
that rhyme with ‘apple’
bloodletting previous lovers
preserved in spices and citrus juices
letting my heart into your mouth
the whole of whatever I am.
Courtney Sina Meredith (1986–) is a poet, playwright, fiction writer and musician. Her play Rushing Dolls (2010) won a number of awards and was published by Playmarket in 2012. She describes her writing as ‘an ongoing discussion of contemporary urban life with an underlying Pacific politique.’ Meredith will launch her first book of short stories Tail of the Taniwha (Beatnik) in August 2016, following her much lauded 2012 collection of poems, Brown Girls in Bright Red Lipstick (Beatnik). She held the LiteraturRaum Blebitreu Berlin residency in 2011, and in 2016 will take up the University of Iowa’s International Writing Program Fall Residency before heading to the Island Institute in Alaska as a teaching artist in residence.