Tony BeyerShooting script meltwater streams over the width of the weir like a cinema curtain back in the fifties when the screen was squarer colours more garish and a good Indian required the application of half a can of cocoa powder (if one were to fall in here a sweet stain would descend from him in the inevitable direction of the sea) and there were beard and bathrobe epics men with gigantic pecs hurling boulders into the tide the ripples felt as far from the studio as this small susceptible outpost InfinitumThe ant’s a centaur                              in his dragon worldespecially when one                               climbs into your eye & seems to grip the sclera                               with many more than six intrusive limbs a blink                               should easily dislodge but just makes worse                               the vulnerable tunnel to the brain where                               Polyphemos & blind Gloucester stumbled                               holding up their hands to execrate the dark’s                               destructive anonymity thus women grieve whose                               world has been expunged Andromache & Hecuba                               mottled with fire & tears then you must also weep                               as an oyster exudes pearl to flush out the diminutive                               instigator of such annoyances Ngarango o Tainui where Hoturoa finally lowered the stone                                           silted up with the tides through generation after generation                                          becoming welcome ground for blown-in grass seed mangroves                             stunted pohutukawa fertilised by blood sludge from the meatworks but also washing away according to real estate specs circa 2008 3288m sq and a guestimate average elevation 19m unlikely even at the lowest low tide (never trust a man with a theodolite or one who can’t in plain words                                            explain what he’s up to or won’t) stubbornly plugged into the upper Mangere Inlet past both bridges nearer the southern shore and Westfield                                                railway yards striped with far more tracks                                         than will ever be used again a legal comma in the draft of the landscape similar in shape to the human heart from the air the name given to many places                                                just as there are many islands motes in the ocean’s open eye 2 there’s no ancient history in this country apart from the whakapapa representing a continuity nearly but not broken 150 years ago and that unfinished record written                                                sharply by the shadows the dawn sun casts on the ground                                                beyond the buildings of the pakeha (beware those who list things                                               other than human names)Ulutoa & Sons Taste of Samoa The Hangi Shop haere mai ki te wharekai in the curve of Mangere Rd                                              to the Great South Rd the nation remaking itself into what it will become from Hawaiki by stages island to island to these islands perhaps never a fleet as such tortured into Géricault poses by starvation and thirst but single waka double hulled solid decked sisal rigged tilted woven flax sails some never heard from again others caught up with by a later voyage’s crew guided by constellations by knots in a fibre strand when the night was blank the smell of vegetation on the wind rivers’ outlet silt staining the sea birds curving the edge of the horizon somewhere to the north the west the east an island brims overflows with its hardiest venturers time turns into ancestors Tony Beyer writes in Taranaki, New Zealand. His published work includes Anchor Stone (2017) and Friday Prayers (2019), both from Cold Hub Press, and appearances in Hamilton Stone Review, Mudlark, Otoliths and elsewhere.previous page     contents     next page
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Article 7
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