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Felicity Wishes

My room looks like a stage set, ready for performance,
The good child good daughter gonna go for Head Girl, huh. Good.
Golden statuette on the shelf, Gucci counterfeits in the corner.
How would your friend describe you?

My childhood idol Felicity Wishes herself new
clothes every magazine,
new kind of person to try on, this skirt and this hat
make her a painter, this dress
makes her a poet.

I don’t know what my friends think
and BuzzFeed gives me a one-word guess.

I’ve got all the clothes still.
Nice easy bits that fit together, template cut-outs with dotted lines and creases,
you can build her into the boss, the girlfriend, the author, the activist, the teacher,
the girl who pocketed your mother’s lipstick on the way out.

Rachel Lockwood
Year 13
Taradale High School

the bonds of love we meet

My little brother understood kia kaha to mean aroha
what with the silence we say it lately
a consecrated quiet

and chalk vows
clinging to school grounds
like blue to clouded sky.

Kia kaha means asking Laiba from class how to tie a headdress
uncrumple careful hands, each slip of scarf
you push back into place.

1:32 pm, close your mouth a moment.
———————–Kia kaha
is the bow of the rugby boys’ heads,
still of the prefect’s shoes. Listening to your friends
breathe.

Light. Kia kaha is the look up,
the struggle of faith through the loopholes of our fists.

We will make this home again.

Pippi Duncan
Year 12
Takapuna Grammar School

A Long Drive Home

The moon is a freckled cheek
Pressed to a dark window.
A soft careful creature with
Skin like milk and tired eyes.

I like to think she’s sleeping,
Pitched sideways against the glass.
Condensation slicking her skin and
The world outside fogged away,

Nothing more to her than a dream.
Perhaps she’s on her way home
But the night keeps driving, on
And on, round and round the

Endless streets. She will never
Get home to a warm bed
But will stay forever, cheek pressed.
The sky a dark window,
And the world fogged away.

Maia Armistead
Year 12
Waikato Diocesan School for Girls

March 15th

I am eating a peanut butter sandwich and
there are children with hand-painted placards arranged like
flowers;
little gods, standing defiant atop the Godley Statue.
Their hands are brimming with hope,
I wait, hands outstretched and catch what
overflows.
These small people feel so big.
I am offered a refrain: ‘This moment defines us’.
And yes, my blurry edges are starting to solidify,
and yes, this is a good definition of us,
scrawled in coloured pen and shouted with collective pride.
My feet are tired,
but one does not sit
at a protest.

I am sitting in the bus exchange and
there have been twenty
gunshots in Christchurch.
It is loud
but later it will be too quiet, and it will feel like oil across the back
of your throat.
It will feel like an earthquake,
and trust me, we would know.
I will count the sirens for weeks afterwards.
I will write a poem, but it will feel counterfeit
because this does not belong to me,
because my language is beginning to feel like a weapon and,
because I sat in the bus exchange,
while there were twenty gunshots in Christchurch
and the #17 bus took me home.

Emily Blennerhassett
Year 12
Cashmere High School

Te Pō

our tupuna made epic stories
to the stars

but right now
i don’t need stories
i don’t need waiata
and i don’t even need poetry

just
the emptiness of a farm at night
the hum of the milking shed
the stones beneath my bare feet
the cool breeze on my skin
and
wonder

because sometimes
wonder is enough
staring
and turning in circles
again and again
not quite full enough

and i know the world is round
because i see the night doming over me
Tāne’s kete of stars
spilling closer and closer –

and tonight
that’s enough
knowing i’m safe
in the embrace of Ranginui and Papatūānuku

and
i don’t even need to be human
just alive
just
here

Elizabeth Nahu
Year 13
Onslow College

one world sleeps in an apple

you are the red of Liberty, of RubyFrost
the crust of Central Park
you are the wings of flags at half-mast
of cultures       torn         apart
you are the long white cloud of pacific rose
the green of Monty’s Surprise
you are the Christmas colours in September streets
a New York state of mind
you are the mantle, the watercolour squares
history moulded in black stone
names in waves of rolling tears
of fallen friends, of frozen fears
one world sleeps in an apple
we are lost in our own city
Deans Ave curls of road cones:
the fire blight for humanity
these New York Times connect our lives
with students striking on streets
you are the yellow taxi exchanging clouds
for chambers of memories
one world sleeps in an apple
you are the core between the sea
synchronised movements of travelling waves
the cocoon unravels and breathes
one world sleeps in an apple
remembering our fallen leaves
we hold our hands between two mosques
in this city that never sleeps

E Wen Wong
Year 12
Burnside High School