An English Tragedy

After Ian McEwan’s Atonement a young couple wrestle for control of a vase on the edge of a fountain unable to recognize mutual love and lust, break the object of beauty

Aphrodite strips to her underwear submerges in the pool, emerges triumphant, angry, saturated water drips from her glistening body remains behind on the paving stones evaporating like an absent father meddlesome sister intervenes in adult affairs, naïvely destroys lives, performs the leading role in her one-girl play mother retreats upstairs behind closed doors and drawn curtains, denies the reality of her existence goddess in a green silk dress leads her man to the dark library for spontaneous bookcase sex innocent man accused of a shocking crime, convicted by class prejudices banished to prison, writes coded letters

Cambridge pals in black tie sip cocktails on the terrace, discuss investments keep calm and carry on with their privilege

Hundreds of washed-up logs bleached by sun and salty wind rest on rocks and grey sand. Breaking waves sigh to shore. Seaweed gathers, decomposes. Fresh green grass emerges between rocks. The sun pierces clouds above the swell and swale of Kachemak Bay. Sea otters frolic, float on their backs. Pine trees line the ridges of the Kenai Mountains. Cloud shadows drift along the beach. Water turns green west towards Russia.

Piet Nieuwland has poetry appearing in Aotearoa/New Zealand and internationally in numerous print and online journals. He is a performance poet, a visual artist, co-edits the annual Northland anthology Fast Fibres Poetry. His new books of poetry As light into water and We enter the are published by Cyberwit. https://www.pietnieuwland.com/

In a storm of kisses a memory of memory drawn from aquifers of blood and the hurricane of silence on theoretical numbers of the night

In the hidden geometry of squalls buried in holocene Aupouri dunes you are like a conversation of frenzied bee hives on a springtime field a stream of violets slowly falling from the call of Australorp roosters

You are the flurried feathers of a scatter of gulls the warm sand on a summer beach the wings of a white bra falling into the surf I cling to the smoothness of light that fills your breasts under the vicious blue sky

In the insinuations of limbs and colors of desire, ephemeral blues and braided beauties in the laughing sky, the soft call of spotted doves in the café beside the bluish purple lazy sea, a red and yellow flag

The day like wide water, processions of green fields and nonchalant clouds, dusty emotions on dry gravel roads, the succulent satisfaction of ripening plums, aromas of rapidly rising yeasty dough, eggs laid on the slow dusk of solstice, flies, the overnight sensation of courgettes and beans, the silken weaving of our afternoon siesta

Everything on the same level surface, without hierarchies, all priorities equal, spectra creating the music, light skidding across a crumpled cloth covering the heavy wooden table, the kaleidoscopic eyes of the landscape, the fractals of your mask spill unspoken glances through the summer shimmer, for an instants fraction, an invisible link unites us like the silence of glass, the lick of an ice-cream

Richard von Sturmer is a New Zealand writer. He was born on Auckland’s North Shore in 1957. His recent books are the acclaimed memoir, This Explains Everything (Atuanui Press, 2016), Postcard Stories (Titus Books, 2019), Resonating Distances (Titus Books, 2022) and the recently published Walking with Rocks, Dreaming with Rivers: My Year in the Waikato (Titus Books, 2023). He is wellknown for writing the lyrics of ‘There is No Depression in New Zealand,’ which has become the country’s alternate national anthem.

Mayu

Mayu imagined us seated around a table. The table was fragile and we were fragile as well. It was evening and someone lit a candle. ‘Just around the corner,’ said Mayu, ‘there’s a hundred years of wind. We may all turn into horseshoe crabs.’ No one disagreed with Mayu. It was a distinct possibility.

Outside the cabin an unmoored dinghy rose and fell with the waves.