MARIANA ISARA is a poet who subsists in Otautahi/Christchurch. Her poems have recently appeared or are forthcoming in Trout, Sport, and Blackmail Press. Here she quotes Rod McKuen, pop lyrics, and a local: John, she calls him, ‘though that is not his name’.


       In this poem

       Everything your mother gives me is
       wrong, but it’s not her fault. She is a
       good person, and a friendly librarian
       but has never worked in fiction. Mostly
       she takes the old books to the cemetery
       and dumps them on graves. Why not?
       Shouldn’t the dead have something
       to read. When I walk through the
       Jewish part of the cemetery I pick up a
       book and read roll over on your back
       and let the sun have this side. All the
       dad plaques are cracked like pepper. I
       photograph my reflection off the
       glossy back of a child’s grave. There
       are dolls without eyes here, static wind
       wheels and spent plastic flowers.
       Michael Jackson walks across the
       moon now. His father mistreated him
       says John outside the mall, repeatedly
       to any ear open. I don’t like his father.
       I saw my neighbour’s daughter come
       out from the methadone section of the
       chemist. She smiled for me. When I
       look a gift horse in the mouth it moves
       to kiss the electric fence. All skin is
       thin and seismic. It doesn’t matter if
       you’re black or white. I am sad
       therefore, I must be very beautiful.
       When they found Luke
       it was a bowline and a handful of
       prescription. I want you back. I want
       you back. Everything dies too soon.