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 Punch, The Spinoff and The Wireless amongst others.