Spaces Between
 
You are a door locked,
key swallowed.
You are a room.
 
Outside people look
through frosted glass
at outlines that seem
to shift and settle
like overgrown moths.
 
Inside you are
cluttered ideas piled
high, accumulated
knowledge filed
haphazardly on shelves;
you are movements
disturbing dust.
 
You are the deliberate
spaces between things, gaps
like wide open mouths waiting
for more.
The empty light socket;
the carpet across which shadows pool
but never meet.
 
You are nothing but echoed footprints
and settling silence;
a window that stays
closed against sound and sun;
the dust that is never let out.
 
 

Beth Rust
Yr 13, Karamu High School 

Queen’s Horse

‘Queen’s Horse’, Joanna Braithwaite, 2011 (reproduced by permission of the artist)

 
Regal head wrapped tight like Tegel Chicken,
Braithwaite uses a paint that makes her easel glisten.
 
With the same air, manner or mien
of her royal majesty the queen,
cock eyed stare suggesting her small gene
pool, something they have in common,
not common as in those folks that shop at cotton on.
 
Inbreeding; something that might be followed by some kind of legal proceeding,
then maybe an alternative pleading, disbelieving and a debriefing this evening –
quite some insult if that’s where this painting’s leading.
 
Comportment; more prominent than the obvious lack of an assortment
of certain royal adornments and ornaments.
 
 
 

Arie Bates-Hermans
Yr 13, Wellington High School

If I Ever Write A Poem
 
If I ever write a poem
I will not let the main point parade around
dressed to the nines in simile and metaphor
bejewelled in allegory and rhyme.
 
I will let it wander around in the nude
drawing stares from puritans
shocked by anatomy they forget they possess
under their own buttoned clothes.
 
In fact, if I can have it my way,
there will not even be a main point.
I will merely write a list of facts
that will not dissipate like the noble
and nonexistent abstract concepts
that disintegrate the moment
you hit a brick wall.
 
When food is scarce lady bugs will resort to cannibalism and eat the elderly.
The common garden worm has five pairs of hearts.
Scorpions have venomous stingers but some have twelve eyes,
 
I’ll write. And I will put down the pen
knowing that I have not romanticised nor ostracised the truth
staring it down in some humanised contest
where one of us will inevitably be broken
and remade as something less than whole.
 
 

Maria Ji
Yr 13, St Cuthbert’s College

The Beekeeper
 
I wanted to marry the beekeeper.
I wanted to soothe his stings,
tell him that each one is a death,
a coffin filled by one of his adopted children
(thousands and thousands of them, sleeping in rows).
Another of his Queen’s soldiers lost in a misunderstood battle…
Let him teach me how to listen to their murmured symphony.
My beekeeper, the conductor
(behind the smoke screen).
Kick the ashes into the air with your soft soled shoes sweet man,
put them all to sleep.
Their sweet snoring, sounds like they’re humming our song…
Honey sandwiches for our picnic my dear?
You never cease to surprise me.
Sticky swallowings with that ‘school lunch flare’.
I lick my lips.
It’s time to open my parcel
(honey smeared on brown paper).
Stop biting your tongue,
we both know what these yellow booties mean to us.
We’ll make them soft shoes, we don’t want anyone to get hurt…
The babies will come in pairs you know.
You’ll kiss their foreheads as they sit in their pram,
I’ll take our little family out walking while you stay home to wash the windows
(too many little lives snuffed out, trying to reach you).
I know this makes you cry,
but only a little and you don’t wipe your tears away, they say this makes you more of a man…
The women whisper about us you know, my sweet bee man.
They say “That’s the beekeeper’s woman and his two bastard sons.”
But don’t worry my man,
my sweet, sweet man.
I know it’s all lies.
For our confession of love had one million witnesses.
Each guest gently humming me down the aisle…
 

Ruby Solly
Yr 12, Tauhara College

Waiting to Fall Off
 
His hedge is a different shape
each time; I think he lives here
but I don’t really know;
the seal does. He smirks and shows off
to the mermaid
who sits on her tail and watches.
Once I sat on his lap and watched him
take out his teeth;
his top lip swallowed his bottom
and all the tattoos up his arm
of boobs
and The Sailor Man.
His legs were red kumara
just waiting to be picked,
waiting to fall off.
Most of the other people here
are nurses
on their day off.
We’re all doing fine;
Helen’s annoying us
just like usual.
Some lady got up and
said a tribute to you
about somebody else.
 

Jade Trim
Yr 13, Taradale High School

once fluid movements are hindered by corrosion
 

 

Annie Stevenson
Yr 12, St Andrew’s College

Turning a blind eye
 
One-fifty to the gram. The stuff was a rip-off.
But not to him. For a dealer, the money is money.
It does its job.
He shouted an order to keep the coke safe to the figure on the couch.
He called this out, and departed. It was safe with Daniel.
He was reading Shakespeare, eating an apple.
He was a dependable guy. A good chap, just like his father.
 
The door slammed shut.
Danny sprung to his feet. Dad wasn’t home.
Time for some mayhem. Pissing in Dad’s coffee was a laugh
But something different this time.
Where was the fun if no one noticed?
Yeah. Something bigger.
Excitement rushed through him.
 
The dealer strolled back in at nine.
Ten more customers today. Maybe even more tomorrow.
But he never even noticed the missing coke.
Nor the broken window.
Nor the copy of Macbeth on the couch.
Nor the half-eaten apple rotting to its core.
 

by Vinay Patel
Wellington College

What Matters is the Hiss of Powder
 
Ingredients
The first weekend of May
Clear slate sky
Mulch of leaves deaden footfalls
Khaki shadows make mud
Tempt the game with a trail of barley
Slither into tattered shoots:
Maimai made of autumn produce.
 
Hunting
The first soft splash – an explosion
Wrought steel and wood used to scatter
Feathers fly like split down duvets
The stain of red on brown
Plumes of black smoke fill the slate
Muting keening laments
The pond splattered pink.
 
Gathering
Charcoal embers crackle
Vinegar draws the blood out
Poison lead inside the breast
Pluck bruised petals
Tear the sinews aside
Oozing sludge left behind
The game of feather secretes life
 
Indigestion
The lacrimal glands secrete fluid
The taste seems stolen,
The hands stained.
What matters is the hiss of powder
Sluicing through the air like the twang of acid rain.
What matters is the salt will carve your cheeks
Like your guns carve their wings.
 

by Lucy Brownlee
St Andrews College

The Window
 
The dog whose every breath will lift
And fall like a beating of wings,
Lolling like a fat man in an armchair
All day will listen to the heat pump humming
And stare wide-eyed out the frosted glass
Sentry
To the world beyond the window
 
And then little winged beetle, staring at the wind he cannot see
And throwing tiny bone-limbs against the window
As if he could make it disappear
Like platform nine and three quarters
 
Elsewhere, mothers from their kitchen stools and children in
bright classrooms
Stare low-lidded at the bird in the shadow dancing
And the muted rain that slides down the arms of the wind chime.
Rusting
 
Upwards the window gazers stare
To the clear
And white
And blue
Half-planning an escape
To the world beyond the window.
 

by Madison Hamill
Queens High School