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Eloise Callister-Baker

Queens Gardens


poppy pins tangled in the wire grass

i had to leave (before it happened again)

moving traffic on every side makes this place a

memorial spinning top

it is the panic (a bird on the wrong side of the glass) 

that leads to 

soft smiles because the scissors are too _____.

beautiful fists, beautiful me

how it twists

the tuft of white features,

things that leave us when something fills us.

trust –

is not moving, it is letting me ((t)rust)

keep perfectly still

look perfect when still

while that thing with wings 

throws itself

against the glass.


Eloise Callister-Baker will graduate with a LLB and a BA in Visual Culture from the University of Otago in August. She has written and edited for Critic, and is a freelance writer contributing to The Pantograph PunchThe Spinoff and The Wireless amongst others.