Zia Ravenscroft
let’s go girls
and it’s true what they say about
being wine-drunk. you’re playing bartender, slicing a lemon
citric acidic into my mug. my wrist scabs over, something
dangerous and itching and un-
explainable. i’m finding new ways to be in love with my
friends, finding lucidity in rambling about
german expressionist films, scratching the mosquito bites on my
heart. (it’s winter. there aren’t any mosquitoes.)
i’m wearing my favourite leather
jacket, the one with the gold buttons. we swap bodies, swallow oranges whole, fourway
kiss in the kitchen. you say pretty bitches don’t
light their own joints so i don’t. all three of you
mess my lipgloss crimson so i keep reapplying it.
nights that would make dionysus jealous, the stars
oiled maraschino and mercurial. i’ve never
prayed about anything that matters but god. my blood runs
quicksilver. you make me want to. the sky
ripens as we breathe each other’s
smoke in. i’m pierced lucky like saint sebastian,
tied to a tree and sharp full of arrows until i feel
underwater and spontaneously combusted and she spills strawberry
vodka on your boots and i think too quickly about licking them clean but
we’re dancing to man i feel like a woman and i don’t know what i
expected and i’m so high i’m counting how many teeth are stonefruit pitted in my gums and
you’re split in half like the moon above us, always above us, and i can still taste the
zest from the wine i finished hours ago and i’m telling the truth i promise.
i’m [ ] and i get what i want
you say your favourite david lynch film is mulholland drive
i know it’s the only one of his you’ve actually seen
this does not have to be a sacrifice.
i pretend every star at night is secretly a satellite
it’s easier if things aren’t so labyrinthine
i prefer fire walk with me: i’m too unmoored by mulholland drive.
i worry about treating you like an acolyte
blue velvet is good too but it makes me feel unclean
all i know how to do is offer myself as sacrifice.
you love me in a way that involves too many knives
i feel like i’ll never understand what rabbits means
imagine me in a wine-red convertible crashing on mulholland drive.
every summer i feel this need to bake cherry pie
or rewatch wild at heart or baptise myself in kerosene
i bet diane (or betty) knows a thing or two about sacrifice.
my favourite twin peaks character is audrey
i don’t want to think about what that says about me
you say your favourite david lynch film is mulholland drive
this was always going to be a sacrifice.
Sadomasochism in the time of coastal invasion
high tide, the rocks slabs of fudge caramel, the sea a thousand shades of fractured pale green
we draw smiley faces on the condensation of the bus window
i have loved you for nearly a year
the road is lined with bushes of yellow flowers
i don’t notice they’re gorse until i get close enough to bleed
the most beautiful things in no-man’s-land are often considered weeds
it’s not out of bloom. kissing will never be out of fashion
the last time i came here was for a midnight rave
stumbling on half a litre of tequila and strobe lighting
it feels different in the daytime. most things do
we trip over empty nitro bottles and broken glass, shining phone torches into concrete pores
my raincoat is lacquered scarlet, yours polished obsidian
underneath, i wear you on my collarbone like medals
nothing makes me feel more like a man than standing with my hands
behind my back guarding a view
i act natural so you can take candid photos of me looking all sentinel and shark tooth
the walls are oil slick with graffiti. i think of all the people who have
left their mark here in glorious technicolour
someone has painted these bricks gold and silver because they’re a magpie like me
someone has sharpie’d the word shelf onto a shelf because they found the obvious funny like i do
i know enough history to point out a room where the original floorboards have rotted
rusted remnants of fireplaces, the turret where the gun would’ve sat
and we imagine it, peering out at the harbour like we’re searching for invasion
keeping watch or a secret
there’s only some kayakers. we wave and they don’t see us
i don’t want to romanticise anything to do with war
i don’t know how to do anything other than surrender
i like to imagine i would’ve objected most conscientiously but i can’t guarantee my past lives
people tell me i am a good kisser and that i know how to take a punch
i wonder if these are the same thing
i wonder if these mean i would make a good soldier
in my dreams i lie imperfectly still on a bed of blooming gorse and am not stabbed, not even once
in your dreams you touch one thorn to my lips and pierce me bloody
i swallow white feathers until my searchlight is abandoned
ulex europaeus. considered by many to be new zealand’s worst scrub weed
bite the bullet, have mercy on me
just not too much
Zia Ravenscroft (he/they) is a trans and queer writer, actor, boytoy, and student living in Wellington. He has been published in Overcom, Starling, bad apple and Takahē, and performed at the National Poetry Slam Finals in 2023.