Category Archives: Poetry

The 2035 New Zealand Poet Laureate writes on the occasion of the election of the Tenth Term of the National Government

Let’s make sure this remains a morbid fantasy not a fact. Vote on 23 September. – VB Fellow citizens, we celebrate today The Surplus. From all levels of the Survival Dome, we gather in solemn appreciation in a National Minibreak of Gratitude. Could all digital devices and personal teleportation equipment be turned to apocalypse mode.Continue reading “The 2035 New Zealand Poet Laureate writes on the occasion of the election of the Tenth Term of the National Government”

Between Contracts

The weeks constrict, pythons around my ribs, under which the turbid valves of the heart pump on with blind certainty. Dreams of flapping wings outside windows. A nest of telephone calls, letters, deposits, routines in which I can submerge peacefully and integrate with process, a limbed machine conferring golden fries, cigarettes, tins of ointment. MoneyContinue reading “Between Contracts”

Economics

There was a commotion outside the window. A million people arrived overnight and moved swiftly to assemble petrol stations, delicatessens and strip joints. Signs point everywhere you cannot go. I think of the past to hold myself down. There are more products than you can imagine. Throttled streets lined with plates of black ice. IContinue reading “Economics”

Commemoration of the Comet Hyakatuke

  The front page notes a report of a comet and how it came darting out of the void, a small silvery fish in dark waters. It zooms over southern horizons. Named for its first witness, a Japanese amateur, he must have combed the night relentlessly to net his prize. It carries its speed againstContinue reading “Commemoration of the Comet Hyakatuke”

Congress

  She was shifting form, encircling and seamless, swirling from moment to moment without apparent sense, with sudden violence and traitorous appetites, with knowing persistence, with perpetual conviction. He was locked within a severe carapace, contained by ancient heat, never acknowledging her lightness, nor her storms that could last for nights and nights, an urgentContinue reading “Congress”

48° 14.5’ S, 168° 18.76’ E

(Person Overboard, 70 kilometres South of Stewart Island, New Zealand, 24 January 2004) It’s not a sea. It’s ocean. Brood black skies and so cold it burns. Vo Minh Que, 22 months of ship time, no kid, picked up by the whipping line and tossed like a doll into four metre swells from a floatingContinue reading “48° 14.5’ S, 168° 18.76’ E”

Central Redux

  Shadows flicker beneath the greenstone waters where the past is inundated by a billion litres of unobtainium, while a ghost road fathoms deep leads through the drowned mountains of an inland sea.   Megafauna of state capitalist uberdevelopment plug the valley’s neck below waving constellations of tussocks, dusky anemones on a reef of ironcladContinue reading “Central Redux”

The Prince of Darkness attends a Work and Income interview

Welcome, Mr Lucifer. Come up. Mind the carpet, if you could. I’m sorry the security guard had to ask you to step outside: but no smoking is allowed on premises and brimstone is prescribed under Health and Safety legislation. I see you have not been able to supply either a clean resume, or evidence ofContinue reading “The Prince of Darkness attends a Work and Income interview”