ash davida jane
lindsay lohan and i
the sign that says only you can prevent forest fires
instils me with a terrifying sense of responsibility
I’m forced to really look at myself and ask
if I can handle it is this how it feels to come face-to-face
with yourself like Lindsay Lohan in The Parent Trap (1998)
a sudden confrontation with her own existence
something most people only experience diluted in their reflection
or a silhouette always turning away not on summer camp
while being inexplicably good at fencing you can take
the girl out of the 90s in fact you don’t have a choice
time is passing and the list of things you don’t know
keeps getting longer why would the divorced parents both send their kids
to a camp so far away instead of one closer to home
how fast does a forest burn how many 11 year olds
watched this film and then pierced their friends’ ears
with a sterilised needle and an apple slice there are hundreds
of nameless birds flocking around us I can’t google
fast enough to find out what to call them all I can do
is stand and point looking at myself looking at them
public holiday
the afternoon surfaces as a series of frames white walls
painted with the shadows of plants the internal window
between the kitchen & the dining room through which I
watch you washing dishes the sun comes in from the left
of the frame in measured diagonal lines the wholeness
of the moment floods in comes abruptly to a head
the fridge gurgles to itself drawing attention away
from the things people are not supposed to see blood or
lungs filling with grey air in the distance
tomorrow’s storms gather themselves amassing the energy
to hurry through the mint plant lonely in its terracotta pot
coming back to life the loneliness I project onto
the mint plant from my human body in the habit of
coexisting in the dining room looking through to you
in the kitchen noticing time waver & then stand still
umbilical
if you have held in your palm a fish drowning in the open air
or swum deep underwater felt the pressure build in your ears
and brain you know how bodies can change
if a fantail flies a circular pattern returning to the branch each time to
perform a serenade it’s trying to woo you
you must politely decline
if a child starts swimming lessons as a baby it’s easier to begin
the frog-like movements still in recent memory shrouded in
the darkness of the womb
if in the hospital the nurse puts your blood in somebody else’s
body pink blooms in their cheeks again their pulse
hammers on thick tubes carry fluids directly to the vein as if
from the placenta
back home with the smell of bread in an oven strands of gluten
sew together flesh settling around minuscule pockets of air
if they find a mate fantails build a nest and bind it with cobwebs
spun to entrap and salvaged for something just as delicate
still enclosed the chick punctures the air bubble that lines the shell
and takes its first breath slick with amniotic fluid the first act is
to break
Ash Davida Jane is a poet & bookseller from Wellington. Her work has been published in Mimicry, Sweet Mammalian, Food Court, Sport, Peach Mag, Mayhem & Turbine|Kapohau. Her first book Every Dark Waning was published in 2016 by Platypus Press.