Sarah McCallum
This Thing
in response to Gavin Hitchings
I'd like to hold it, this ring
thing made of ground poetry
and beaten metal
I'd slip my thumb
into its thumb-size space
to wear a nuclear power plant
on my knuckle
To watch it spin and jangle
like a superhero's ring
as it shoots plasma bolts,
splits atoms and pulls me
through time and space -
I'd be The Green Lantern
with my emerald vapour trails.
And we'd meet up - me,
Plastic Man and Captain Marvel -
on Wednesday afternoons
(when crime is slow)
to sit in McDonalds
with our thickshakes and fries
and gripe about how it gets
harder to tell the good guys
from the bad in our fight
for comic book justice.
Or maybe we'd share laundry
tips on keeping superhero
uniforms free from lint.
But for now I tap at
the perspex and
press my ear close
to hear it murmur;
this thing like a ring.
Yoko Uehara
The relic
in response to Erik Kuiper
A long time ago, the world was too dangerous for
me
So I raised defenses around my soul
The solid silver walls allowed no trespass,
until, the day, the invaders made a way
through the fortress-
and have occupied it ever since
I came to see that the defenses were no use
and realized I had also refused the grace from a
higher power-
I buried my timeworn kingdom under the ground
Today I find this thing
that used to be a part of me
Annabelle Armstrong
Confounding Jewellery
in response to Erik Kuiper
Behind the screen
a floodlit world
of suspended invention
Look once and be amused by
the solid silver translation
look twice and note the flaws
imperfect joins
exposed glue
the underside a moonscape of holes
a finger-printed surface
of paper tape and abandoned lines.
Look a third time
and interpret
this
this creation
this inspiration
this jewel in a confounding world
of like
the separation of
reality and the invented
is a perspex wall.
Bridget Auchmuty
If This Were Jewellery, Where Would You Put It?
in response to Sean O'Connell
O
you should not rest
Between the
elements of air and earth
But you
should pity m. William Shakespeare
In baggy trou a weefella
four-legged firm-planted
sheens - a dark cat shell
two gold dots aslant
are squiffy eyes in the smooth
organzaed front
and four round holes in the top are proof
of darkness; they let in light.
In his Perspex booth
he shivers slightly
hovers suspended between the elements
of air and earth. Artificial light
and air conditioning dent
the quiet like a ship in port.
Inside his oxygen tent
he is eviscerate. He ought
to have aorta, pulmonary vein,
flesh. You'd have thought
these holes were meridians.
His eyes beseech
you to take him in.
You want to reach
into the plastic orphanage
hug him and set him free.
Mandy McKee
Abandoned Part
in response to Lisa Walker
Once part of an old Mercedes
you hang now in the last position.
*
Four hollow exhausts, one set ruggedly wired
then it was bodged against a square plate.
*
Tossed into the metal scrap heap
at the recycling centre
abandoned until a boy found you.
*
He took you home, ground away
the rust and polished you smooth.
*
Now halogen light shines on you
and if viewed in reverse
you can be deemed the first.
This anthology was produced by students on Nelson
Marlborough Institute of Technology's 2008 Poetry course in response to
the nine exhibited interpretations of Bill Manhire's poem. The poems
are produced here in the order in which they were read at a reading
given on May 21st, 2008.
Cliff Fell, Poetry Tutor, NMIT
