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.
Play, For National Poetry Day: Suzanna Fitzpatrick, Charlotte Dormandy, Lee Fraser
10 Children dart in the dark, screamers
streaming sweets and neon, their parents
Play, for National Poetry Day: MD Bier, Catherine Sweeney, Rachel Burns
Those hot hot summer days. Hair curling against sticky clammy foreheads.
Pony tails, pig tails or braids. Keep it off our neck and backs.
Play, for National Poetry Day: Alexandra Corrin-Tachibana, Ruth Aylett , Brian Comber
They can imagine a forest,
we don’t need this minimalist tree,
we’ll represent a place to live without walls, without foundations or a hearth.
Play, for National Poetry Day: Jennifer A. McGowan, Judith Shaw, Robin Houghton, Wendy Klein
Over and over, you are Dorothy
or Glenda the Good,
me the Wicked Witch of the West
Play, for National Poetry Day: Oenone Thomas, Seán Street, David A. Lee
Every evening at the care home, I pull in
two armchairs til they’re facing. Opposites,
we never fist bump, high-five or
touch each other’s vying outstretched fingers.
Play, for National Poetry Day: Gayathiri Kamalakanthan, Paul Stephenson, Jem Henderson
How two men can become
four men can become
eight men
Play, for National Poetry Day: Elena Brake, Karen Downs-Barton, John Mole, Eleanor Holmes
Take eight each of hex bolts
washers, locks…
it’s important
to fasten these tightly.
Jade Wright
Things have been rough lately.
It seems impossible now,
as the breeze relieves us
Ruth Lexton
The new year slouches forward, unlovable,
barely acknowledged but for tired, gritty eyes
and a muffled scream into the kitchen towel.