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)

Poppy Haynes (Chilton St James School, Lower Hutt)

Had I an intelligent dolphin…

I like the idea
of riding a dolphin
down the Hutt River

perhaps because of its sheer absurdity
dolphins being mostly salt water dwellers
and the Hutt River being rather too shallow
for such an escapade.

Perhaps, because I relish the thought
of speeding past Gladys,
purposefully trundling the bus towards
school and assembly and complex conjugates.

Leaving Silverstream, there would
be the problem of the weir.

However, had I an intelligent dolphin,
we could jump it
in the kind of perfect arc
formed by a rainbow
or a perfectly lobbed paper dart.

Sleekly, in slow-motion
we would rise,
splattering the sky with
cascades and Catherine Wheels
of muddy water.

And people would stop
their cars and stare
as my dolphin and I
splashed and skittered joyfully
out to the harbour.

Catherine Palmer (Epsom Girls Grammar School, Auckland)

The Hearts on the Vines

The hearts on the vines smile, the white hearts
bloodless as albino babies.
     They pump nothing.

A man
                  (silent opening of spiracles,
                  membrane primed to snap)
finds a deep and heady music
between layers of lipid.
A man
            is masticated.

And the white hearts smile:
truncated sadness. They know
where the path leads, trees leaning in anticipation
and proteinaceous like silk.
      They bare flaxen teeth.

A woman's fingers
                  (swelling like amoebae under milk sheen,
                  skin of a tough and wizened greed)
encircle a molten core.
She listens rapturous; it beats for her alone.
A woman
      is consumed.

The hearts on the vines smile.
       They are cold.

Mia Gaudin (Epsom Girls Grammar School, Auckland)

harriet

I

It was twelve

you crossed the road
in your dad's
" lawyers never lose their appeal" t-shirt
and sat down laughing

I offered you eggs

but instead
you gave me the marshmallows
from your flat white
and we talked

about uni courses
the ball
and the colours of the sky

II

We were ten

you went to America for two terms
and when you called me
with a half rehearsed accent

I cried
and told you to come home

you did (with candy)
so your dad had a party
with his lawyer friends

we stole cherries
from downstairs
and spent the night
at your bedroom window
spitting pips
and watching them roll quietly
down iron grooves
on your neighbours' roof

• Tabitha Bushell, Yr 12, Auckland Girls' Grammar School: ‘Ink Man''
• Nic Harty, Yr 12, Karamu High School: 'Stranger'
• Hunter Douglas, Yr 12, Wellington College: 'Peter Pan'
• Ish Doney, Yr 12, St Andrews College, Christchurch: 'Make It More Like a Song'
• Alissa Hacket, Yr 13, Wanganui High School: 'Lullaby for an Insomniac Nation'
• Grace Thomas, Yr 12, Wellington High School: 'Brief Reality'
• Arron McLaughlin, Yr 13, Hamilton Boys' High School: 'bridge, river, hands, and'

Sophia Graham – (Year 13, Epsom Girls Grammar School, Auckland)

Like Tea and Crumpets

I was almost Victoria Jane. Like tea and crumpets.
Like train stations. Like long gloves.

And then I wasn't. I was ‘baby Graham’
and at night, my mother,
smuggling me out of the hospital nursery,
would whisper names in my ear,
trying them on me like hats,
testing to see which ones tripped off her tongue,
and which got lodged at the back of her throat.

Daddy wanted to call me Grace. Like his grandmother.
Like lace handkerchiefs. Like hymns.

But my mother said Grace was a name for old ladies,
so the tag on my wrist was unchanged, my birth unregistered,
and my uncles, playing with my toes and counting my fingers,
laughed and called me Gertrude, Horatia, Augusta.

My aunt said that my name should be Lila. Like scented pillows.
Like dusty books. Like soft jazz.

Still my mother read books
and tried to find a name I could live up to,
while my daddy tucked me into my cot,
with satin trimmed blankets.

And then I was Sophia Claire. Like Greek philosophers.
Like Italian screen sirens. Like pink roses.

I was Sophia Claire. Like wisdom.
Like clarity.  Like me.

Alisha Vara – (Year 12, Rangi Ruru Girls' School, Christchurch)

strawberries strung on lines

I

the house is vast
and blank.

every good boy deserves fruit, you
whisper, your face imprisoned

in me where
a gazelle creeps through green,

through blood,
raw and persisting
as we say grace.

II

the world never seemed
so bizarre before.

I cut my fingernails short and
paint them red,
like red strawberries strung on lines,

stolen lines with a certain kind of grace.

I want to know who will read this, read my
mind and see me lost within the bed like I
see it now and

make it clear I could never quit
your morning coffee or sad smiles.

I will not show this to anyone.

III

we have just begun.

you say sanguine and repeat it.
I am cycling down a hill with the rain,
soft and endless.

what would you do with the sky

unravel and weave it through your ceiling,
string it down your harp?

your hands rough and
dry on my skin.