16

From the collection '8 poems about me and you.'

Are you good enough, strong enough, smart enough

and would you believe them if they told you you’re not?

The best of you is at large, they say.

You’re missing vast parts of yourself.

Once it was impossible 

to fill in your pieces, 

not crossing all of their lines.

Soon time fashions fools of us all.

Doubt is reliably ill-informed

via any number of charlatans 

whose fault is failing to see 

the world has passed them by

before the wisdom they have on offer –

false facts, faux figures, lost hopes and dreams –

is filtered through to you.

So you’ve felt for a while now 

(knowing this is nothing new)

you’ve been equipped to fail.

Fed all these off promises.

You’re under-prepared, 

you’re underdone,

your sources of knowledge 

as uncertain, unready 

as you hoped not to be.

Completion.

I find the most difficulty with writing is that I'm terrible at finishing anythi

Perfect.

Nine words is just right for an epigrammatic sentence.

Driven.

We are driven towards endings, as we are by lust, because we must know the shape of things. We need to feel and regard indistinct outlines in sharp relief.

Colour Plate.

Verdant.

Callum 34. Impossibly Ripely handsome. Art English teacher. Too kind, too sincere, popular, envied. (A bit of me??). Carl 32. Courier franchisee. Withered. Manipulative, sardonic, evil, scathing, mean, magnetic. (A bit of me??).
Karyn 28. Landscape gardener. Earthy beauty. Vulnerable, pleasant, introvert, considerate, damaged. (A bit of me??). 

The character outlines were framed with radiating pen strokes, like cartoon suns, which elevated them as somehow more vital. The inky lines gave the words a lustre, as neon tubes give to opaque signs. 

The story, set in Christchurch over one spring day and titled The Verdant City, would, the author planned, harvest meaning from fertile imagery – the garden as metaphor for life, where a sharp-nibbed pen prunes crowded sentences and light promotes truth.

At any moment you’ll be discovered and planted deeply into the bitter truth of this place. Who would say that? The author didn’t allocate the line to a character, and she was undecided whether or not to include it; in case critics pounce upon it as autobiographical; for fear this new sphere I inhabit named ‘recent divorcee’ stains every page, faintly but indelibly like a watermark. Every fiction must embrace unavoidable elements of fact.

The story was ready to be written...