2025 runner up

Someday I’ll

Someday I’ll
give you a proper goodbye,
not one I say in a dream,
where I wake to wonder:
Is this entropy?
Do you see it?
The mess life leaves in the world is the most permanent thing about it.

–

Just look at the horizon —
nature’s straightest line is an entrance to infinity;
two parallel planes are ill-fated lovers,
destined to never meet.
I wonder
how much further the distance between earth and heaven is
from the ocean and the sky.

–

Don’t think of the future;
a lifetime (辈子) has been shrunk down to a blanket (被子) that barely reaches my feet
You covered it with
blue & pink peonies that bloom into butterflies,
like the very hungry caterpillar at the end of the story.
Call it what you want,
————–metamorphosis / growing up
—————————————— & older
because someday,
the person you become won’t recognize yourself now.

–

But don’t worry,
someday is just beyond the horizon you’ll never reach
and today’s sunset is just yesterday’s sunrise, in reverse
to remind you;
that a prayer is whatever you do on your knees.
Yours: devotion to service
Mine: a toilet stall confessional
————–& my girl is a reverend priest
——————–who swallowed my deepest confession.

–

Someday I’ll tell you,
————–someday — so much hope hinges on two syllables
Someday is the sound of Gabriel’s horn,
playing a fermata over a semibreve rest
Sound is lost,
with a saddleback’s wings
muscles atrophy, feathers shrink
leaving bones — hollowed out,
that whistle when wind blows through,
as silent as regret.

–

Hope: those feathered things are flying in V’s to you
Meanwhile,
I’ll lose language to the fluorescence again, & again
& I’ll let my head hang heavy
under a clear moon
————–but it’s not guilt,
just homesickness.

–

Someday,
when night falls,
I won’t say goodbye, but
晚安姥姥

Jasmine Liu
Year 13
Rangitoto College, Auckland

DOING MY SELF-CARE APP WHILE EARTH IMPLODES

& it feels impertinent to be proud of myself for drinking water
when there’s none of it to water the roses outside &
the drought is only mildly inconvenient but people are
dying in california. &
the rotting petals spray across the concrete path outside &

listen to scarlet gunfire on the tv, blanketing the radio
promising destruction of the enemy; & so instead of
listening i’ll check off paint in the conservatory
because it has the best light. & we had

a burglar in our house last night, but it’s okay because
we let him in. & he wore a mask of skin over inhuman
mechanical brains & i saw myself in his eyes. & he only
took things that didn’t matter, & now thanks to him
i don’t need the light of the conservatory to make paintings &
doesn’t that make art so much more accessible &

i don’t even feel sorry for checking off eat lunch
on my palliative self-care app
while there are people starving, because i am a callous
& soulless creature. i spend $24.99 on a stuffed animal
instead of saving a palestinian child. by the end of the day
the plush cat is wet with tears & stained with
the blood like the money it was bought with
where i have torn the mask of my skin away
revealing a monster underneath,
someone who lets kids die. & i check off
make a clichéd self-aggrandizing metaphor
to make yourself feel like the victim &

poets are meant to write about the ocean
so: in the beautiful glittering aquamarine ocean
people are drowning & an ocean between us
doesn’t mean i can’t taste the salt. i do not check off
stay off social media because i must pay my penance,
must grieve for every single life lost because who else will &
i do not check off do not drown because ICE is deporting
a mother & her child across that ocean,
that vast sparkling azure ocean &

regardless of my own vain guilt
today is the beginning of luigi mangione’s show trial
behind the courthouse they pile up the rotting bodies
with no graves. & i went there once, to see the evidence
for myself, a reminder that rebelling doesn’t work

they’ll hang him tomorrow, & i’ll pretend i’m
grieving for the ukrainian children. my plush cat
will testify in my defence at my kafka trial. i’ll buy
a book banned in 19 school districts in texas, &
read it instead of the news. & i’ll check off
stay alive but today that feels impertinent.

Alexandria Farrington
Year 12
St Marys’ College, Wellington

Energy

I.         to have a legacy

My family bach — it’s hard to call it a ‘beach house’ like everyone does nowadays.
Three rooms. Couple of possums.
It’s falling apart,
the magnum opus of my craftsman great-great-grandfather
from Liverpool, he cut his teeth in Whangamōmona.

He built the roads there
they didn’t last either —

neither did Whangamōmona
130, 126, 125 people.

There’s a hedge by the bach
My uncle can’t stand to cut it
he can hardly stand on his own any more.
We are getting complaints from the new neighbours.

All the neighbours are new.
They buy ‘beach houses’ because it’s the in-thing,
either that, or they’re buying bungalows for retirement.
Those ones are dead before long.

New ones take their place,
Driveways glutted with fresh tyre marks.

II.         time immaterial

There was a solitary pine in the woods,
a big fuck-off kind of tree
383 years old—or 185.
You’d think it had the time to spread its roots
all the way to Waitangi, or Kororāreka.

You’d think someone would’ve heard it fall.
There were millions of people around.

Light permeates the roof; water too
dreams and tears from four generations.
The floorboards groan
under the stress of cleaning
so Uncle John doesn’t think we’re untidy.

III.         untidy or not,

my cousins still play in the field.
My mum and aunt still drink in the bedroom,
laughing until they cough on dust.
My dad and uncle still throw dice by the hedge

UE BOOM. Adele crackles.
Frisbees fly in wild, uncatchable arcs.

My grandma lowers herself into a white chair, knees like floorboards.
What happens when we lose all of this?
Words unspoken. What do we lose of ourselves?

IV.         acculturation

Standing before the pine, my artisan ancestor
hefts his axe.

My grandma told me the stump was as broad as she is tall
That might have been impressive,
once upon a time.

V.          continuity

When a tree falls a hundred saplings
surge through the decay.

My science teacher taught me energy can’t be created
or destroyed.

My baby cousin
stares up at me with wide eyes.

VI.         the conservation of energy

————–I can hear the bulldozer coming;
it grinds around the corner, misplaced amidst
rural roads.
Gravel spits and scatters before it.

————–I can hear the chainsaw buzzing;
the forest has never sounded more silent.

Cameron Lewes Murray
Year 13
Wellington College

CHANGE

i feel
dizzy

a confusing world
turns

pivoting on a
steeple

i feel so
so sick

Thomas Rowe Palmer
Year 12
St Andrews’ College, Christchurch

Illicium Verum*

They’ve learnt to sink to the bottom
Perhaps harvested just before ripened
The gurgles they make rather guttural

Grandpa would scatter it on everyone
—-Spread it on our land
————Acres of it
——–It’s in his re-used glass jar
Full of scorching tea

He could fit 48 in his huge-knuckled wilted hands
Run my polite fingers over them, and it’ll ripple
Pulpy soup coated pericarp are sometimes brittle
Not meant for consumption
I feel guilty not knowing him.

He asks if I’ve eaten today
There’s nothing else to question
Never the aroma filled with compassion filled with home

My teacher says she’s never understood that kind of love
It must be hard showing affection that way
But you don’t know
———————————-And I don’t either

On my rice right now, the last scraps of it in his spice drawer
Grandpa, one day I will ask to learn all your recipes
Nurture them in the next home I’ll live in
Attend the scale-clawed
Brown-scarred
Star-shaped spice

For now
I will accept the fragrant ripples of your love
As it may not be seen or heard
It is tasted

* Star Anise

Penny Dai
Year 13
St Andrews’ College, Christchurch

NGA INGOA I TE RANGI – THE NAMES IN THE SKY

i buried my reo
beneath the white chalk of classrooms,
hid vowels like secrets between my teeth
the words left to rot
in the corners of my mouth.

at night, i dream in echoes,
names carved in bone and wind.
my tūpuna call me by a name
i never learned to answer to.

i wear silence like a second skin.
my voice folds in shame
every time i choke on a word
my nan would’ve sung to the sea.

once, i traced the stars with a fingertip
and tried to find home in Orion,
but they don’t teach us Matariki
on concrete playgrounds.

i let my shadows walk ahead
bigger, bolder, brown without apology.
me?
still trying to fit
into mirrors that aren’t made for girls like me.

my ribs echo haka i never screamed.
my hands unknown to the swing of poi.
i feel like a false version of whoever stood before me
a kete with no knowledge or faith

i bite my tongue
so at least my blood can try fit in this mould
of who where why what i need to do
i doubt it

still, i write.
carve my whakapapa into verse
like im weaving my name back into the mist.
so the tui might remember
who im supposed to be.

and the sky

Ranginui he waits,
heavy with all the names i’m learning
to carry again.

Maia Hills
Year 13
Wellington High School

Whispering to the Braves.

They heard the story of Aladeen and Genie,
They saw them playing under Arabian lights,
A bit of mischief and lots of fun in the Arabian nights.
The Arabian nights however, now start with frights,
Wavy, sandy deserts blooming with gunpowder and might.
Millions of lies, under one big, bright, starry-spangled, dreadful midnight.

The world sounds asleep, careless about the people who bleed.
Millions were stranded over decades of strife, many lost their loved ones or their own lives.
Death comes from the sky, where iron rains and blood drains, through humanity’s cry.
Bullets thrown like confetti and crimson flows like Nile,
Mothers cry for children, corpses end up in piles.
Children cry for mother’s love and a piece of bread,
Lying under the rubble of masonry, all quiet and dead.

Fathers fight, brothers fight, fight the little girls,
Some fight with bullets beam and
Some with silent screams.
World watches, world cries, many wrapped up in hush,
Some care, some do not, no one’s in a rush.
Blood flows, land glows, but no regret or guilt,
Pyramids of Gaza continue to be built.

Corpses come in all sizes, no matter the age,
Families hold each other in dreadful mirage.
You should go look, we should go see,
How much they are shaken, from the river to the sea.

When the fateful day comes,
Before you leave, wipe their epitaphs,
Blow away the dust,
And whisper to their graves, “Freedom at last”.

Mohammad Nazif Islam
Year 12
Timaru Boys’ High School

The Eternal Jellyfish

Blue blood sifts through my fingers.
Blue whale, blue energy drink.
I birth a fish into a pool of it –
Zero sugar, extra blue.

Osmosing the caffeine –
wow look at those fins
turn to pure muscle.
Taurine is bull sperm.

We used to gawk at
outside the dairy on our way to school.
the one where they stole Josiah’s scooter,
Year 5
guzzling that liquid.

It isn’t though.
Bull sperm.
It’s made synthetically in labs,
from chemicals
made synthetically in labs.

Why is the ocean blue?
I used to ask,
endlessly looking for an answer.
Do they make it synthetically in a lab?
Do the whales lap it up?
Does the hue sink into their slimy skin
like dyed cloth –
polyester,
made synthetically in a lab.

O child of mine – the fish.
Sizzling and crackling,
stinky fumes rising from the pond.
He has disintegrated.
Was the extra blue too much for you?

A pile of bones lies at the bottom of the pond;
long, white, spiky spine.
I cry.
I see his beauty now in the bones.
I liked how the sucralose
shone off your scales.
You made the bull sperm look really cool.

And now these dying cells
shuffling about my pond –
one last crackle and pop.

Out of the ash,
out of the rubble,
a brand new fish is emerging.

God has given me a second chance,
one last dance.
Fingers crossed I don’t burn this one.

Isla Partridge
Year 12
Te Aho O Te Kura Pounamu