Madeleine Lifsey
to be home
february is winter, and what does ‘home’ mean? Fox promising
armageddon, so i flee into aluminium wings splitting sky into sun
like a parachute into not caring what home means, to summer
on the kinder side of earth’s waist where grey slush
is a dream, and the voices screaming no good are quieter
we devour ethics in march nesting
between the pōhutukawa trees and the pizza shop that won’t stop
sending us junk mail screaming no good, but
quieter so i cut it all to collage but then
meet you and you tell me what you think home means
between the pizza shop and pōhutukawa trees, where they say
don’t walk through the park at night alone but i do anyway, where
you break me and make a mosaic inside of me,
the night i fall for persimmons, and
you and Freire and the rainstorms all warm
unwinged again in the north
she says there are ghosts in the pavement cracks
and the veins in the maple leaves turn red in september
but i see them in the clothes i am afraid to wear because i feel too fat
and the crater scar on my back from that one time we
(in october i am only distracted)
Madeleine Lifsey is a vegan-living, bike-riding, volcano-hiking, globetrotting educator, activist and poet. If she’s not writing poetry, she’s likely doing philosophy with five-year-olds or brewing kombucha. Her work has been published in VioletRising zine, Quick Brown Fox, and Center for New Americans’ 30 Poems in November.