Hotere

When you offer only three
vertical lines precisely drawn
and set into a dark pool of lacquer
it is a visual kind of starvation:

and even though my eyeballs
roll up and over to peer inside
myself, when I reach the beginning
of your eternity I say instead: hell
let’s have another feed of mussels

Like, I have to think about it, man.

When you stack horizontal lines
into vertical columns which appear
to advance, recede, shimmer and wave
like exploding packs of cards
I merely grunt and say: well, if it
is not a famine, it’s a feast

I have to roll another smoke, man

But when you score a superb orange
circle on a purple thought-base
I shake my head and say: hell, what
is this thing called aroha

Like, I’m euchred, man. I’m eclipsed?

from http://www.honetuwhare.co.nz/poems.php Steele Roberts Publishers

Bright orange snail shells
a ten-limbed starfish
half a plastic gun
and the dangerous part of a crab.

A high-pitched boy kicks waves at his family
as they put cockle shells into a shopping bag.

There’s a glass bottle filled with sand
black lumps of wood like rocks
a chewed lion red can
and a rust-coloured skull.

Then it’s just sticks. Sticks and foam
all the way down to the last curve.

© Saradha Koirala 2009

A pair of sandals, old black pants
And leather coat — I must go, my friends,
Into the dark, the cold, the first beginning
Where the ribs of the ancestor are the rafters
Of a meeting house — windows broken
And the floor white with bird dung — in there
The ghosts gather who will instruct me
And when the river fog rises
Te ra rite tonu te Atua —
The sun who is like the Lord
Will warm my bones, and his arrows
Will pierce to the centre of the shapeless clay of the mind.

Thinking of Jo, 1976 – July 2010

We left the wine bottles
as candle-holders
to decorate the hut,
swept up and out
and down towards water and back
scrambling over bracken

clutching
at the base of young trees
like epiphytes

then down again a cracked track
where old branches lay like martyrs
over too-steep steps
back to the river
flowing faster
and deep so we couldn’t cross

without a hand to hold
and our feet were numb
and the sun
stung our wine-swept eyes.

© Saradha Koirala 2008

She said, “it sounds like courting”
when you took me to the beach,
the wind blew my eyes to streaming,
we tried to stay on the hill.

He said “a poem is like a question:
neither true nor false”
I whispered “poetry is truth”
but I’d misunderstood.

I said “it shouldn’t be possible
to describe anyone in one sentence.”
You said “there isn’t much time,
try.”

I said “Outside my window a shimmering boy
carries his shoes, a jacket
and smokes, while I sweep sand
from beneath my pillow.”

© Saradha Koirala 2010

She wakes me in the night
an angry voice in the hallway
heels on a wooden floor.

She comes out while I’m on the deck
leaning forward in the folding chair
turning pages eagerly.

She says Hi.
I say how are you?
Hung-over.

She pauses and I follow her gaze.
Is that a moth or a butterfly?
I say it’s a butterfly

you can tell because it rests with its wings up
not spread.
She says it looks like it’s dying.

and recedes indoors.
I think of the child’s view
that all creatures have an opposite

frogs have toads
mice have rats
and there are tricks to telling them apart.

© Saradha Koirala first published in Hue & Cry issue 4: Champion This! 2010 – out now

In my last year of school
we made a shift to higher ground.

Our family was the two of us,
we chose a house on the port hills.

In the company of fruit trees
and a kitchen of polished wood

we became reacquainted.
First my mother changed

the direction of the staircase,
hammered it into shape

and carpeted it smooth,
then she painted each room

lavender blossom, garnet symphony,
peppermint beach and buttercup fool.

Winter was dinner on our laps
sitting close by the fire

summer was breakfast under the plum tree
as it grew shady with leaves.

When she drove me down
to start university

she came back to a full crop
of dark omega plums

and moved the living room
to the front of the house.

© Saradha Koirala from Wit of the staircase (Steele Roberts, 2009)

Everywhere I go people keep saying
It’s no big deal
and shrugging away.

Like the time my chain fell off
and I had to carry my bike
up the Allenby Steps.

Or when I bit my tongue
trying to laugh
and chew and swallow.

Someone plays handmade flutes
on Manners Mall
while my students smoke cigarettes.

They call out to each other
across the paved space
and the pigeons.

People act rueful
in the face of devastation
but say Whatever though, eh?

The pink beret
does not warrant your poesy
and that’s not a real question.

A real question would be
Are you sure?
I mean sure sure?

© Saradha Koirala 2009

Like melting snow
my landscape changes
with constant warmth

Morning malaize
that lasts
until sunset

Your vibrations of sleep
lull me
to a safer place

In coastal forest
a golden light
ascends

Too much depends
on the way you look at me
how you respond

And then it snowed
and it felt okay
to be so cold

Like sparks from a new years’ bonfire
I’ll glow, rise
vanish

I’m always short-sighted at twilight
the city blurs and yet I remain clear
in the dusk of my fading eyesight.

Edges halo and hues will highlight
my squinting vision, my deciphering stare.
I’m always short-sighted at twilight.

Focus on keeping thoughts upright
beaming faces beam only when near
in the dusk of my fading eyesight.

The evening greys remain still, bright
and the thrill of late birds I can hear
but I’m always short-sighted at twilight.

My pulse is the flickering street light
the haze is diffusing my fear
in the dusk of my fading eyesight.

Auburn tinted with dark grey and night
I walk, I glow, I peer
I’m always short-sighted at twilight
in the dusk of my fading eyesight.

© Saradha Koirala 2009