Melissa Chen (Epsom Girls Grammar School)

Travel log

drive, you say
drive me somewhere
high above the world – grab your keys
let’s go. i want

only this
the open road
unfolding possibility, your
warm body in the front seat –
the rolling

horizon
give me unfinished
sentences and ravenous hunger for
other things, at every abandoned gas station
we could take communion of

two dollar crackers
and music, you say –
dance harlequinades and sew
checkers over sleeping lawns at midnight
uptown, the beautiful

undiscovered land.
let’s change our names
become enigmas, become
objects and travel from hand to hand
aging slowly and alone together, let’s

find home through untravelled driveways and
crawl across jungles to a room of our own
between signpost legs
the cheapest motel
and voices falling through the dark of
mezzanine floored parkways.

David Seaman (Taradale High School, Napier)

Wrapped in logic

I wonder what it would be like
if you came in test pot size
or A5:
Just to taste.

Try you on my walls,
a frame for the sky.

If you don't fit
it might be easier to store you
under a shelf.

Sienna Smale-Jackson (Otago Girls' High School, Dunedin)

Eugene

my brother is
in the bathtub.
he is playing with
his heart's plumbing.
he puts the plunger
onto his chest
and pushes down,
the plunger sucking
itself upward,
releasing the clog
of clotted emotions.

when he gets out
there's a red, rashy
circle in the middle
of his ribcage;
all the body's pipes
pulled too close to
the surface.
his lips stretch up into
a sanguine smile,
unconcealed, open-hearted.

Meg Waghorn (Rangi Ruru Girls' School, Christchurch)

The Little Heart

Cut away your pale skin with a pen.
Old silk or lace, folded carefully
In a wide box, with tissue.

False heart,
Bare in its cage of little ribs.
Wet in your cold hand, roll it in ink and watch
The way it rubberstamps itself across the page.

The little heart is tired now
Smudged black, small in your hand.
Warm red fish.

Slot it back in place
Like the jigsaw piece of you it is.

Safely inside your warm self
The little heart throbs quiet.

Your veins run black with ink.

Joanna Wang (Pakuranga College, Auckland)

Family bonding at 4am

My grandmother woke up at crazed 4am
looking for her moneybelt
waking the entire family.
And because she sleeps in the lounge,
and because she resents it,
her fury was more pronounced,
slamming the hallway door so hard that
I found a dent in the wall the next day.
Stomping her feet, angrily loud,
my grandmother searched for her 50 grand
up, and down the hallway. The bathroom. The toilet.
The laundry.
The kitchen. Cupboards.
Scrutinising every single tiny grain of space
for a bright red bulging belt she thinks I know nothing about.
Knock, knock, on my mother's door.
"I've lost the bloody thing."
A long time later, my mother got up,
(she would get hell for that slow response later)
and mother, and daughter,
navigated through the labyrinth of 25 walls in our house.

"It was under her bed."
I could hear my dad's laughter from next door.
He shouldn't have done that
now there are two things for the grandmother to cry over.
With the moneybelt tucked safely under her pillow,
my grandmother went back to bed,
while the entire family thought about the money and 4am.

Arielle Tai (Epsom Girls Grammar School, Auckland)

Le Ode to Teenage Angst

Thomas is a Goth.
He dyed the hair
that he wears long,
black
like his clothes and shoes and
lipstick.

On the pages of his journal
are his latest poems.
"Blood
           Darkness
                         Despair
                                     Why? "

Thomas stops to think.
He wishes he was a vampire.
Then everyone would be scared of him
or think he was cool
and invite him to their parties.

"Honey! Dinnertime!"

Thomas puts his pen down
and bounds down the stairs
two by two,
to Simpsons,
and his dinner of steak and potatoes.

Meg Ryburn (Rangi Ruru Girls' School, Christchurch)

Monbretia

Late-summer-green leaves
Trail lazy fingers through tired brown water.
My schoolgirl shoes and white ankle socks
Plod steadily along with my down-to-earth kilt.

The toi toi and flax rise high above my head
With its neat blonde plait.
Suddenly my eye is caught by the bright monbretia;
Daring orange amongst the placid green.

Drab thoughts of homework and Hamlet
Fleet as effortlessly from my mind as
Murky water flows under the bridge beside me.

With that one sight
T houghts of you
B ombard all my senses.

"Mombritches?!" you said hesitantly, jokingly,
As you tried to remember
The name I had taught you.
I didn't care, soaked through and covered in river mud
I laughed.

I instructed you to look at the sunset
And you told me about cricket
As our arms moved in sync while we paddled home.

Shezani Nasoordeen (Epsom Girls Grammar School, Auckland)

Gardening for the 21st Century Woman

Prune.
This is the only way
you will get anywhere
girls.

Be ruthless.
Who needs frivolous flowers
and leaves
and fruit.
All that nonsense
will be of no use
to you.

You must start
with some sharp secateurs.
Cut first
the flower
then the stalk
and the woody root
until you are left
with a neat
manageable
skeleton.

Next week girls–topiaries.

Helen Lyttelton (Rangi Ruru Girls' School, Christchurch)

Cards

I

We are playing cards.
I hold myself back,
feeling for the right moment
to end the game.
I grip my set in a fan by my heart
so you can't see,
though you never cheat.

II

I remember that bright-grey day
in the park.
I thought the sky
was on the brink of something.
A storm, perhaps,
or a heavenly announcement.

Unfolding my austere umbrella,
I scooped up a brown bundle
of leaves&srquo;
carefully, because you never know
what might be underneath.

Clutching them,
I watched you toss your own
bright curling leaves
into the wind
and you danced around
as they fell and stuck in your hair.

Melissa Chen (Epsom Girls Grammar School, Auckland)

Reprise

yesterday                                       (fine)

do you remember summer days
blazing sforzandos when you pushed me higher
   always    & told me you liked glissandos
i turned from the sky and watched you
waving on the ground    happily

& winter lead you by the hand    away
   you were lost in the morning fog
but you called it love &
drew hearts on opaque glass
   they bled but you laughed

later you cried    i heard your tears staccato
fall    your cheek pressed against
the window pane matching raindrops
outside you sospirando in the dark
   the piano in e minor for
   forty days and forty nights

beneath floorboards in your room
   a gold laced book
on sun-stained pages in cobweb ink
      a requiem    unnamed

now the birds sing a capellas but
you are deaf    & twice disgraced

on the window
   not rain nor frost but
bleeding hearts    rhapsodies &
fingerprints
      on white piano keys thin black islands
      & dust middle c untouched
                                                       (Da Capo al fine)