< Back to Contents

Mel Ansell

You


are the muse for my art heist.

You are the waterfront Len Lye sculpture that I am perilously climbing.

You are my pioneering anti-locust research. You love your mum and you leave me half of

your fresh cream donut in the fridge, William Carlos Williams be damned.

You are a sexy, sexy communist.

You have had poems written about you before, so I had to write you a whole collection.

You know, all poems are equal but some are more loving than others.

You hear Banksy is shredding for RnV ticket money.

You don’t like insincerity, so this isn’t.

You are a good long walk.

You are watching me gallop across the plains of Romanticism on a horse called

You, I have both breasts bare and

You are thinking how wild I look as my teeth are bared like an attacking bear

You might see taxidermied in the Great Northern Hotel while

You watch Twin Peaks over my shoulder as we hunker in bed, comrades.

You literally won’t stop giving me honey. I can’t bear it.

You do not know that there is an explosive device in the stomach of the animal.

You do know how to wiretap a girl’s heart.

You ask me if I love you, and I tell you I do because I do.

You know, the value of that punched Monet skyrocketed.

You and I are double-handedly destroying every moment that has ever happened to us.

Will you always love me?


Ask me again if giving God a face
depletes him, this time I know the answer.

If God was anyone, and you met them and their
empty cask in the desert, you’d open cracked

lips to say ​how’s it? ​with eyes like green coins
in oases. You’d try and make them something

good to drink from cacti. If I was anyone, and you
and I crawled upon one another in a desert,

you’d lay a hand on my parchment belly
and tell me of the nearby oasis. The flamingos

keep one foot above the water, and the zebras leap
in pairs ignored by lions, who watch

from the green, as Jesus relaxes on a lilo, gloating
about the abundance of creation, and God forgets

to work in mysterious ways. In the nubs of my eyes
two tiny deserts chance spring. Once, I desperately

charaded for my inconsolable cousin ​–​ our Grandpa
sitting down at God’s table after a good, long game

of cricket. If I was a part of Jesus’ body, it’s a part I
would laugh at. But I had to tell her ​–​ earnestly ​–

Grandpa is enjoying his burnt toast and marmalade
while angels sing. Ask me who wins a cricket match

in heaven. Kiss me again, your mouth is still wet.


Mel Ansell is a poet who’s crossing her fingers for a good hot summer in Wellington. Hot weather makes for feverish writing. She has previously been published in Takahē and Critic.