turbine 02

 
 
  
 
Turbine 02
Audio
Poetry
Gregory Dally
Emily Dobson
Cliff Fell
Janis Freegard
James Gardner
Chloe Gordon
Paula Harris
Chris House
Elizabeth Isichei
Andrew Johnston
Julie Leibrich
Anna Livesey
Robert McGonigal
Katherine Morice
Bridget Musters
Robin Naylor
Nic Newman
Naomi O'Connor
A. E. Rothman
Frances Samuel
Richard Smith
Catherine Vidler-Smith
Margaret Vos
Louise Wrightson
Fiction
Non-Fiction
  

Chloe Gordon

Work by this Author:
   The Last
   Friend Whose Parents Were Hippies
   Wellington

Friend Whose Parents Were Hippies

While my house in the early 80's
     yawned drum machines and synthesisers,
you fell in
with a San Franciscan set,
     a house green
     with photosynthesis; violins
aah-ing
in the sun of the dining room table.

Ten four-year-old fingers
     learned to sing.

When ten,
we socialised.
No one told us
     that cucumbers on the eyes
do bugger all, really —
that masks
     won't help skin cough
     out its
          toxins
(only inner organs do that,
smokeless in flat little bellies)

A decade
     of silliness
and we're allowed to be drunk,
small, small price.

We're too scared to cut our hair.
Atoms remain
          split like ends.
     Everyone
thinks their age is the best, and the ugliest

but always, when we talk on the phone,
the same, fond sound of your dining room
and someone's violin
echoing,
echoing from one plastic fist
               to the next.

« previousnext »
 
Hosted by New Zealand Electronic Text Centre