Swimming pool
Somebody stole our swimming pool onceWe awoke and it was goneThey had emptied it out in the course of the nightTucked it underneath an armAnd runIt wasn’t even a superb oneIt value fifty dollarsAt the Boxing Day salesIt didn’t have a frameMade it simpler I supposeWhen they cameTo take it away
And I appeared round
In any respect our thingsThe couches from the dumpThe patties we ate with breadThe gutters crammed with grassThe home windows patched with plywoodThe swing-set rusted lengthy agoCars months with out a regoSwelling water beneath the linoMattresses with sharp springs100 damaged half-things within the garageEvery image ever taken displayedLike a shrine to the dwelling and goneNothing of valueAnd wonderedWho would do this
And I appeared round
On the models throughout the highway that fitSix instances to a boxAnd the silhouette of Joseph SavageAlive and dealingUp high and belowThe refugees from ColombiaWho stored to themselvesAnd the intercourse staff aspect by sideWhose youngsters visited weekendsThe offended man and his catThat the armed defenders pinned downWhile we watched by the blindsThe ghost who killed himself the month beforeWe arrivedPut his head within the ovenI’m toldThe girl who stayed together with her uncleThey had been loversHer voice wasn’t sturdy sufficient to be heardSo she purchased a microphoneTo report himTo the empty road
We had been listening behind these blindsAnd I Googled Easter gross sales
Taken with type permission from the brand new anthology Poetry Aotearoa Yearbook 2025 (Massey College Press, $37) edited by Dr Tracey Slaughter, and obtainable in bookstores nationwide. It’s the most recent annual of the yearbook based in 1951 by Louis Johnson and serves as a subjective, generally eccentric best-of round-up of latest poetry in New Zealand. The 2025 iteration has 141 new poems by 127 poets, together with Victor Billot, Bob Orr, Carin Smeaton, Kerrin P Sharpe, Devon Webb, and three winners of its faculties’ competitors, Ellie Zhou, St Andrew’s Faculty (Yr 11), Jasmine Liu, Rangitoto Faculty (Yr 12) and Chloe Morrison-Clarke, Papanui Excessive Faculty (Yr 13).  In his dazzling evaluate of the Yearbook, Charles Bisley singled out the Kierryn Hintz poem for particular reward.
