Alexa, name for assist
The tyre’s flat, the lights may very well be faultythe combustion engine not fullytuned to the skin world, a radiatoror worse clogged with trauma, watchingyour father slam his dinner plateinto the bottom, tomato saucesplatters that may very well be blood andsome of them are, a muffler unhingedand dragging alongside the groundyou are dragging me alongside the groundI have misplaced tears, misplaced tooth, misplaced youand I don’t know if I ought to name yoursister or AA roadside assistanceI am this near getting an e-bikefor god’s sake, type your shit
Taken with variety permission from the brand new anthology Poetry Aotearoa Yearbook 2025 (Massey College Press, $37) edited by Dr Tracey Slaughter, and accessible in bookstores nationwide. It’s the newest 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 Fiona Kidman, Damien Levi, Vivienne Plumb, Bob Orr, Feana Tu‘ako, Keirryn Hintz, Mark Prisco, and three winners of its faculties’ competitors, Ellie Zhou, St Andrew’s School (Yr 11), Jasmine Liu, Rangitoto School (Yr 12) and Chloe Morrison-Clarke, Papanui Excessive Faculty (Yr 13).  A blinding evaluation of the Yearbook by Charles Bisley appeared in ReadingRoom lately.
