S e c r e t s blackmail press 24
Chris Parsons is a New Zealander who taught English as a second language
in Japanese Colleges and Universities for six years. He now works and lives
in Christchurch. His poems have appeared in Auckland Poetry, Black Mail
Press, Jaam, the Otago Daily Times, Snorkel, and Southern Ocean Review.
Near the water
is where we
of passed lives
(blue penguin - Eudyptula minor)
sandy dry like
a storm petral
healthy looking even now
my father's honed
face headed steady
into yet another wind
two tiny Kuaka
(bar-tailed godwit - Limosa lapponica)
across inner and
its pupil's reflecting
turning tidal light
into a last
gone gone gone
I'm hankering for a cold zone,
where I can kick back
on something solid. 'Cause out here
the lead's running hot and I'm uneasy
about the sun, a huge blowtorch of a
world balanced on the
horizon, about to roll
over the edge any minute.
I want a change
to get high on moonshine
and lay down on an air bed.
The clustered beans are floating again
My stubble scratches
the flameproof, airproof suit.
There's no water for laving off
My only fellow voyagers,
respirating in silence.
An astronaut knows what sailors
knew, that all travel is
squalor, and that life begins again - arriving
back to tiny universes of the familiar.