hattie salmon
life lesson
1
down at the marina toilets. you found one of those little gold shower tokens. it’s heavy. so close to real money. you stash it in your nemo purse and fake that shower. rich. years later you find the token in a drawer full of sea glass, so plastic that it bends.
2
at the jumping rock, low tide, perfect for bombing, remember ben diving from the highest spot and being scolded, for fuck’s sake, not from the rotten rock ben, how the uncles came back without us, to jump from it themselves.
3
catching kahawai, so excited you forget that once it comes out flailing someone has to kill it. you watch dad knife at the gills. it bleeds its own bath in the plastic bucket. you look at the pōhutukawa that scale the motutapu edges and the red flowers pale. he guts it. somewhere in the muck you see that tiny heart beats. he lets you hold it in your hands, rinsing off the excess blood. that tiny heart goes on without body. you sleep with it beside your pillow in plastic tupperware, wake up to a tiny heart still beating, until somewhere during a game of last card when it throws one last punch. at kawau dad laces the rod with leftovers. this time you know to look away.
love birds
up
up?
down
hopes the song of karure | kakaruia
once
ink bird could only be seen on tapuaenuku island
tapuaenuku who raised birds long before people people with
colonial predators
human
rodentia or both
both came to tapuaenuku both came for ink bird
ink bird placed its eggs on the rim of extinction
an extinction
that fumbled
a pair from its fingers
they called him old yellow
her
old blue
& thought how they were the saddest of lovers those two
Hattie Salmon was a wide-eyed MA student writing a book of poems at the IIML last year – but otherwise just writes bad songs, weird stories, and excellent puns on the shopping list.