Today’s choice

Previous poems

James Norcliffe

 

 

 

Sarsaparilla Road

travels through swamps
and reeds, over a black
water creek and a narrow bridge,

past the swift river with all
of its snags and eddies,
through the winding gorge

of slippery-back slopes,
scarps of limestone
and galloping gorse

to where children parked
in cars wait and wait under
a deepening sky, pink clouds,

sarsaparilla and raspberry,
a bribe sweet and bitter
in their mouths, and

still sweet, when they
fall asleep, the hotel lights
yellow in the darkness.

 

 

NZ poet James Norcliffe has published eleven collections of poetry including Shadow Play 2013, Dark Days at the Oxygen Café (VUP) 2016., Deadpan (Otago University Press, 2019) and Letter to Oumuamua (Otago University Press, 2023). His Selected Poems: A Day Like No Other will be published early next year. In 2022 he was awarded the NZ Prime Minister’s Award for Literary Achievement in poetry.

Kate Noakes

If you follow faerie lights
that wisp where boardwalk
becomes trackway, make sure
you’re stocked with milk,
or bread and salt.

Mai Ishikawa

    Taxi I took shelter under a tree, where you also sheltered. You looked at me awkwardly, as if to say Excuse me before shaking your feathers – a tiny droplet landed on my cheek. Suspended, we held each other responsible for the silence. We listened to the...

Lue Mac

Sad how things expire before you work out
what they mean. Like earlier I was noticing
the rose petals on the path, all damp and slick,

Alice O’Malley-Woods

For the Peregrines of Offham Chalk Pit The quarry holds your eyrie like a grateful palm. You - indelicate gobber all gape and gum-pink circled in the beach white like a mouth stuck in wonder. O spit-shrieker coming back for yourself, tearing fur so diligently, never...

Lori D’Angelo

The cat puts his paw on my hair, and I think about
where we could go if we weren’t here. Maybe the
nail salon, which seems like a good destination for
kill time Saturdays.

Lucy Wilson

Dear Fish, you swam from life and gave your flesh; forgive me.
In your ice-tomb, your scales a rainbow of tiny glaciers, frozen in flight;
like you, I let myself get caught, sank my heart in a false sea.