FOR THE BOY
What you are, Child, is the moon
A great, fat, bright thing
but a wriggling moon, a dribbling moon
a moon with butter toes and anemone lashes
a moon with custard brow
with sea glass eyes and seashell fists
What you are, Child, is the moon
just a perfectly ordinary thing
Just a marvel at which I gaze.
RADISHES
First published in Gramercy Review
A single diaphanous breath, entrusted to the tides
dodges ships and sharks, pollution and phantom-like jellyfish
Reaching land, it runs many miles through the aquifers
beneath rocky canyons and verdant fields
Turned to steam, it will rise up through some subway grate
to surprise you in Tucker Square, where you are contemplating radishes
You will feel it on your cheek, a mere drop of humidity
as warm and as wet as the lips of a woman you used to know.
LEVITY
Pōhutukawa needles
vermilion as valentines
are less due a comparison to our love
for their amorous hue
Rather, it is their levity
In an instant, they abandon
their tree for unknown winds
As light as the needles on summer's quick breath
hangs the harmony of us
faithlessly awaiting flight.
emerald butter
languorous moss awaits
falling sakura
QUEEN STREET
Cold on the concrete
under Louboutin’s window
he dreams of new shoes
PREHISTORY
First published in Peony Magazine
He is such an easy baby.
The story ends and his eyes of nectar close
arms tucked into a cotton Mardi Gras of dinosaurs.
Behave, you lot! My tiny awakening sleeps.
We were a cacophonous, dangerous clan —
our blood has teeth —
but in your veins, Child, it sings.
In you, there is bagpipe music
I kiss your brow and check all is silent
or silent enough. You’ll sleep soundly
through the insidious percussion
of your tiny bones growing.
I sense the impending crack and scream.
I hear the breath drawn before the trumpet blares
the tuning orchestra of cruelty and doom
the drums, the death rattle of World grown wary.
Rest now, Child, on your parading behemoths.
When you wake, I’ll grasp you tight.
With all the oxytocin my scienced love can yield
you just might grow to be a hero
Because if you can free me, you could surely save the rest of them.
You could tame the beasts and be the lullaby World has longed for.
When they ask me how such a man was raised
I’ll grin and simply say “He was such an easy baby.”
AFTER THE WAR; or, THE PARK WE LOVED
There is a mosh pit of daffodils
slamming and swirling around a crusty trunk;
a peek of white tipped kinks on the horizon;
a mist the wind will not let fall;
an hour of mortality and separation
that strokes our fragile flesh;
a bomb locker, long forgotten;
and a pleasant chill at Hawthornden Reserve.
RUSSIAN CORIANDER
First published in Tales from Dominion Road
It's raining...
Let's have a threesome!
You, me and Clive Christian
in the back row of the Capitol.
Give me exactly seventeen deep breaths
against the nape of your neck
that forbidden space
seen by all who meet you
but known by me alone.
Ronnie's boy
or the girl scooping popcorn
they don't know the scratch of your stubble.
They're not held captive by the mineness
of iris and amber.
So, take your seat
away from the smudged reflection of tail-lights
away from the scent of petrichor and noodles
and allow me aspiration.
Come, Lover,
let's have a threesome.
You, me and Clive Christian
in the back row of the Capitol.
© Copyright A Campbell. No work on this site may be reproduced or scraped for AI without the author's express permission.
No content on this site may be reproduced or scraped for AI without the author's express permission.
YELLOW
Dripping like yolks from the tree
kōwhai bloom above two, once so ardent
as they hurry to separate brunches
pretending not to see the other as they pass.
It will spoil their Eggs Benedict
and plague them both for weeks
this near-miss under a cacophony of flowers
the colour of hope or old bruises.
MOTU
First published in Tales of the Hauraki Gulf
“You” dwells between sleep and awake
between sound and silence.
“You” is the break and the swell
the scream and the lullaby.
Ungraspable and ill-defined, just like me.
“We” drifted the tide of our many lives
creating hope from hopeless histories.
Floating between hauora and hell
“We” was the fever in which I longed to dream.
Now, my love, I’m quite the realist.
Between us are all the great and little barriers.
Between us is a never-conceived son
and grandchildren with molten chocolate eyes
the dozen proposals that happened
and the anniversaries that didn’t.
Between us is beauty run rampant;
countless waltzing waves,
pōhutukawa needles adrift on warm winds,
the wine we never drank,
the boat we never sailed,
the summer we never became.
I know now, my love, that I am Leigh
and you are Port Jackson.
We are the edges of the Gulf.
We share only tides these days
and we’re both just fine, I guess
Reaching toward each other
but not for each other
always looking inward
united by what divides us.