by Emma Neale
courageous
for so costly
so ruinous
such closeness
apart.
The TastiTM Taste Guarantee
At Tasti, our team are extremely proud of our delicious range of quality products, so if you think we could have done something better, or if there is anything you would like to know, please write …
Dear Team
Thanks for the invitation.
I’ve just eaten one of your peanut-butter-flavoured Mega Nuts bars and I think you
could have made the packaging less enticing.
Because I wasn’t intending to eat your product—I was saving it for the kids.
And now I can feel the sticky caramel on my teeth, an odd sort of syrupy aftertaste
of disappointment and gooey popcorn, and I’m writing this while deeply aware
of the middle-aged pizza dough roll over my jogging shorts, and of my increasingly
care-worn so-called willpower.
One bar is 10 per cent of my average daily calorie allowance.
I am profligate. I am ill-disciplined.
I am quite possibly your ideal clientele:
the kind who still partly believes that a muesli bar
is vaguely Swiss and healthy;
who thinks she can put your product in the kids’ lunch boxes
and it will be both wholesome and exciting;
it will make them feel nurtured, central, and remembered;
it will encourage them to think of me fondly
when I am (body willing) in my eighties
counting the minutes till I can have another coffee
waiting for whatever sound postal delivery makes
in the non-dystopic future that many of us cling to
when seeing the thin blue lines on the pregnancy test stick
hoping right from that moment
that somewhere out there in the hurtling planet’s
VibroTM cities that survive because we all learnt
to recycle, conserve water, use cook-pots and screens
powered by the sun, the kids will sense
their prefrontal cerebral cortexes tingle and waltz
with the memory of opening the old ice-cream containers
we used as lunch boxes when the stupid flick-flack side-wing locks
on the expensive brand-name job-specific lunch boxes broke
and there, in its pack with the silver foil underskin
that shakes in the light like the sequins on a debut dancer’s tutu,
was the chewy rectangle of protein and processed carbohydrates,
an understudy of mother’s and father’s love
that finally gets the chance to fill in and shine …
and so the kids will write. Or call by. Or ring.
All of which I guess
is just to say
(hey WCW! Still got it!)
since you asked, I would like to know
how close-grained and sweet-glazed
is the happiness of the future
assuming there is happiness in the future?
Because sometimes, when I catch a glimpse
of time’s webbed, oil-black wings,
its tangerine-stained, crazed-bullet teeth,
I’m so stunned and dread-run that even eating
a candy bar in Supergrain disguise
seems to be the opposite of inaction.
Dear Old Diaries
I’m sorry it’s been so long.
Sorry I dumped all that on you.
I suppose you know I shredded and burnt one of you
in the aftermath of the bad lover
I wished had undergone a personality transplant?
Poor dead diary, punching bag, scratching post, voodoo doll,
ritual sacrifice, little strips blackening and bending,
contorted like small mouths howling in the waste-bin flames …
Also, I guess you know that I mislaid one of you
when we moved house, twelve years ago?
It’s bizarre how things turn out.
I mean, here I am, the long, slow reveal,
the ‘in-the-middle-of (I hope) the-journey-of-my-life-
I-came-to-myself-within-a (please let it be only one) dark-wood’,
the nameless abstract future
that once seemed to peer down
over the biro’s gnomon shadow
through time’s clear, curved bell jar
as if to find itself in the fine print:
and now mainly noticing
not the creak and labour of history,
the wonky frocks and bad habits, teen kicks,
blitherous superstitions, or made-for-TV morality—
but that little tousled head, bent as if in prayer;
though really more like a cat entranced
by the moving hieroglyphs of peculiar blue ants:
inky trails that lead to where it couldn’t fathom,
still can’t.
Joy
Do not use somersaults!
Remove all sharp objects from jumper!
Do not use when smoking!
Do not use with high blood pressure!
Do not use during pregnancy!
Do not use when suffering!
Use only bare foots!
Chain Mail
Bernie Gluckman, Texas
Daniel Luton, Balclutha
Cheryl Briar, Stoke Newington
Elif Smith, Istanbul
Emma Neale, Dunedin
Dear one
This charm has been created in the name of hope.
It will protect you like armour if you pass it on.
If you don’t, we cannot be blamed for what fate befalls you.
One woman read this poem and passed it on.
Luck came to her in the form of many book vouchers, sympathetic friends,
and a shortlisting in an award with a cash prize.
Another woman read this poem but failed to pass it on.
We regret to say that the soul collector came to her in the night.
It lay beneath her bed, and, when she slept, checked the recycling bin for the poem,
found it there, then plucked the woman’s soul for its dark album.
A man read this poem and he intended to pass it on, but left it in his briefcase
on a train. The train derailed, and the briefcase was destroyed. This man’s full fate
is really too melancholy to relate, given—as is often the case with poems—you may
be reading deep in the marrow of night, with just a small desk lamp dozing
in its night cap for company beside you …
So let us add emollient here to that burning urge to know the truth, and add that
further persons of fluid gender read this poem, circulated it, and to them came great
prosperity and—it must be said—many more wild and unaccountable poems.
Our advice is this. Within three days, make a copy of this poem, with your name at
the bottom of the list that begins it. Wrap the page around another poem of your own
as a charitable gift to the person named at the top of the list. (Now cross out that
name.) Circulate this poem to five more friends.
Within ten days, your actions will have brought you bewilderment, laughter, curiosity, conversation, hope, and an abundance of poems.*
Will you strengthen the chain of human involvement? You must decide.
For with this last line, the charm is cast.
* (How many exactly will depend on postal services in your area.)
Dear Future, I’m afraid this is how I begin to lose you
I pictured a life jacket but I could only say diving gear.
I couldn’t find a knife because my hands thought of spoons.
I wanted to slip away though I sang Where’s the book?
I hunted for my wallet when I meant to recall the years.
I worried at the probl
em, but he could only see solutions:
when he said Can you please explain?
my reply was ghosting strangers on the stairs.
He wondered aloud if I even knew his name
yet at the sight of his bowed neck
regret finned to the evening’s surface,
blue koi flickering at the stippling of rain.
Postcards Just Won’t Cut It
Dear old man holding his cane halfway down like a marching baton, scything the air the way a child swings a stick at long, wild grass
Dear slightly floury, cottony February peach that helps us remember, wrist-dripping, shirt-staining real peaches
Dear exasperated established senior male author who thinks Track Changes are hell on earth but who keeps trying because of the indomitable human spirit plus deadlines
Dear little boy having his first day at a new educational programme, who had to roll a dice ten times this morning to make a decision, and who hides his head under a favorite bed-sheet he takes all around the house, and who likes to caress the small rabbit’s ears he fashions out of the two best corners
Dear elderly, thin woman speed-walking like a stalk of lavender blown along upright in a great wind
Dear creased white net curtain billowing and reminding me of another botched poem with a white net curtain billowing which reminded me then of my father’s death and which even now makes me want to cradle his mid-thirties wet swimming-pool head from that ’70s photo where he embraces my little sister, his goofy grin as if he’s the benign human incarnation of a bear with its stomach full of salmon
Dear patterned steeplechase of light and shade through the creeper, the deck fencing, the ranch-slider, now showing up on the sandy, crumby, balding rug
Dear man who can hold my gaze now though I suspect it was something close to prideful, and so therefore shameful, in his background, which in fact we have never discussed
Dear woman whose colour sense in everything from intricate stitchwork to what dishcloth and coffeepot should sit side by side is like an optical cadenza
Dear twig from the Bullock Track used as a bookmark in Knausgaard’s A Man in Love
Dear hash brown chef of the hashtag generation
Dear eight-year-old yodelling loudly in the Botanic Garden toilets to voodoo away ghosts, spiders and bogey men and exiting again with a soap-foam beard
Dear small girl with a tiara over her baseball cap and lime-green sandals snap-domed with silver Mercury wings
Dear crank caller, too shy to even dial the number, but composing devastating witticisms under his breath on the bus
Dear middle-aged man on unexpected weight-loss bout caused by love for another man’s life, no that’s not a typo for wife
Dear teenager plodding uphill dreaming of swimming from shore to shore and wanting to be reincarnated as music
Dear strand of jazz piano falling through the air like a string of silver lights
How I wish
I could stay
Economy of Style
Due to circumstances
we should have foreseen
the exquisite poems
we had hoped for
have not been composed.
We regret to say
until further notice
this space remains closed.
Envoi
Reader, wait up!
Please, don’t turn away like that.
I’m sure we can work this out.
Let’s just sit here a while,
feel the light pour
like silent cataracts,
its radiant wash joining us,
two dots of consciousness
particles we might name
the Vladimirs and Estragons
of trust.
Acknowledgements and Notes
Thanks are due to the editors of the following publications where some of these works (or versions of them) have appeared or are forthcoming: Angry Old Man (US); A Poetry Shelf for Paula Green; Bath Flash Fiction Anthology 2018 (UK); Bridport Prize Anthology 2018 (UK); The Cerurove (US); The Friday Poem: 100 New Zealand poems (Luncheon Sausage Books, 2018); Geometry; HeadStuff (Ireland); Landfall; London Grip (UK); NB Magazine; NZ Poetry Shelf; Otago Daily Times; Phantom Billstickers poetry posters; Poetry Daily (US); Poetry Ireland Review; Poetry New Zealand Yearbook 2018; Reflex Flash Fiction; The Spinoff; Sport; Verbatim Found Poetry; and Ware Poets Prize Anthology 2018 (UK).
‘The Appointment’ was longlisted in the Summer Reflex Fiction International Competition 2018. ‘Still’ and ‘Mère-mare’ were both shortlisted in the 2017 Bridport Prize Poetry category, judged by Lemn Sissay; and ‘Courtship’ was highly commended in the 2018 Bridport Prize Flash Fiction category, judged by Monica Ali.
‘Dear Future, I’m afraid this is how I begin to lose you’ was shortlisted in the National Memory Day Competition, UK, November 2018. ‘Doorway’ was commended in the Ware Poets Open Competition, UK, 2018. ‘The Local Pool’ won third place in the Bath Flash Fiction Award 2018, judged by Nuala O’Connor (Nuala Ní Chonchúir).
‘So Buttoned Up’ was selected for Best New Zealand Poems 2018 (edited by Fiona Farrell), IIML.
‘Withdrawn’ was originally commissioned for the ‘Poets on Place’ event at the Dunedin Writers & Readers Festival 2017, produced by Ian Loughran.
‘Letter from tomorrow’s tomorrow and tomorrow’ was originally prompted by Tautitotito (Disputation Songs): Other genealogies of Aotearoa New Zealand music (2018), produced by Alex Taylor and Celeste Oram. The producers asked for letters ‘written in a speculative future and addressed to the present day’ to address several questions, one of which was ‘How has music and sound shaped the histories of Aotearoa New Zealand, and how will it continue to shape our futures?’
‘So Buttoned Up’ uses the two opening lines from Stephen Bett’s ‘For Love of You’ as its own opening lines. ‘my mother in this way mixing me wings and tongue’ takes its title from a couplet in ‘Red’, by Paula Green, from her book Chrome (Auckland University Press, Auckland, 2000).
‘Joy’ is a treated found poem; the text is rearranged from a Big Bounce Trampoline safety notice.
Grateful acknowledgement is also due to Creative New Zealand, who funded me to write a novel, part of which rebelled and ran off into poems.
