White Butterfly (Laura Mckenzie)

I remember white frailty
filling clear skies
like wedding confetti,
thousands of cabbage moths would halo the Hawkes Bay hills
we referred to them as butterflies
because that sounds much more picturesque
than a cluster of white-winged lamp lusters.

Those white butterflies,
varied in shades
shifting hues of milk cream
yogurt white and
pale yellow – like
the juice that would slide from fresh corn
when Nana McGill would slice it off the cob
her false teeth incompetent
when it came to such solids.

I remember in the adjacent paddock,
Heifers and jersey cows would stand, dozing near the swollen creek.
The smell of rotting water crescent threading through yellow grass.

I remember hot tarred pavement on the way to the school pool,
loose pebbles stuck to bare
rawing feet; puddles of thick liquid tar
-’they need to reseal these roads ‘– Aunty Jane would mutter,
skin freckled from blistering summer rays, zinc on her nose and dark patches under her pits

And always the butterflies. Masses of moths.
Clutters, dipping and threading through the tussock grass.
Dipping and threading through the sun dust.
And on balmy afternoons
we would drink lemonade
to rinse the salt from dairy chips
off our gums

the lives of flax (Elizabeth Welsh)

outside the window grow flax bushes

so close that they cling to the wooden frames

when it rains,

great black straps of licorice in the night air –

whipping, whipping, whip, whippetty, whip,

recoiling and racing back

to lash the panes.

the wind takes it out of these great roaring beasts.

& so, after a night

of calamitous flax,

when I draw the curtains

the mornings after rain

I am surprised to see

long gangly arms of flax,

demurely bent, half crooked,

an old lady’s teacup finger,

their thick bodies committed to the earth,

after all.

Central Otago Holiday (Sarah Paterson)

You drove back to childhood with your family one day

And saw, as you did before with eyes that expected wonder, the

Shorn and shaven hills of Otago.

 Your eyes would swear

That rumbling, restless animals are

Trapped under the mossy surface, desperately writhing to escape

 

Frozen in their struggle beneath

Soft stone and unmoving ice,

Painted with every green and crowned with white.

 

Beyond the hobbit hillocks are the furious ancestral peaks

Thrust up from their own shattering pasts

Still, with a silent majesty.

 

And Ole’ Ma Galvin with her alpine breath

Skimming them all and freshening the face

Of that glacier-tear lake.

Spiders in the Mirror (Holly Painter)

Sometime after sunset, they crisscross their circus net between

Driver’s side mirror and rubber window frame and wait

To feast on midnight corpses and early morning leftovers

Of befuddled old flies and cannibalized post-coital males

 

With daylight comes the driver, who twists on his ignition

And sticks his fingers through the meticulous film

So he can watch the asphalt unwind behind without a filter

 

 

But there are times when the driver is forgetful

Flustered by the swarthy flirtations of the Telecom repairman

Or the urgent call from ElderCare to report that his mother wants her winter coat

 

On those days when the driver only notices the delicate bridgework

As he’s rolling through the first stop sign, jolted with each panicked tick of his watch

He merges onto the motorway and waits for the wind to carry away that subtle sticky trap

 

But as he races along at 100 k, still the slender silks remain

Fluttering through flashes of sunlight

A ghostly white kite arched against the sky

 

When he pulls off at last in Grey Lynn

The spiders’ threads rest again, whole but hanging limp

Stretched and relaxed like the heel flaps on an old pair of nylons

Or the condom discarded under a bench in Western Springs Park

Untitled (Caroline Cooper)

Rain falls in fat watery splashes

it soaks the garden,

and slicks the cobbles

It drowns the ants

hiding

in the cracks

It bruises the plants

hanging limp

in the courtyard

The battered parsley wilts in its pot

 

Rain comes harder

in larger sweeps

brought by the wind

and the fast rushing clouds

that turn the moon off

and on again

and off

 

The sky is black-purple

a blanket, a bruise

 

The bougainvillaea is alive, dripping red -

 

- not noticing the winter

or caring it’s night.