Poems of Woman Scream 2013 New Zealand

Woman Scream 2013 at New Zealand, coordinated by Catalyst Road Show

Kimberley Holmes

Shoo Fly, Don't Bother Me

At three cat call requests endured already

The girl turns her body language away

She starts to pray into the holy water and gin in her glass

“Please dear God... Let him take the hint”

The eyes of the man land again on the girl

Like hungry, unwelcome flies

But if she has the nerve to say

“Shoo fly, don't bother me”

He'll most likely just call her a Bitch

For not appreciating the 'compliment'

So she says nothing and laughs sadly to herself

Thinking,

That the fly spray, bug zapper equivalent for men

Is pepper spray and a Taser

But while insects have no means to understand their trespass

Men do not possess that excuse

Extinguish

She wrote her maybes all over my bed and my body

and I still smack myself awake each time

I catch myself resting in them

I miss her like everyone's Gods miss the simplicity

That existed before we had the audacity

To cry ourselves Human

Evolution, is just millions of years of fucking

That birthed way too much feeling

The noise is worth it.

But sometimes, just barely

Neither of us meant for all this stardust to make something so complicated

I fell in love with her bravery,

The way she held up her heavy smile for all the world to see

I wish my poems were pretty enough for her to stay

I woke every hour for the first night

Convinced I could wake from it

Only to sleep again, convinced I could dream her back

I loved her name and how she didn't shorten it to make it easier for other people to say

Language always meant something new with her

I read novels from her hesitations

Tripped over her misleading eyelashes and fell for her again

So I am grateful,

She did me the courtesy of disappearing

She knows,

I'd hold onto hope

Like a flame ballerina clings to the candle wick stage

If the flame lets go, she will die

If I let go, what will I

Extinguish?

Marisa Cappetta

The Water Gleaners

I am Titania.

Water filled me when I was young

and my husband loved me.

We have acres of rich aquifers,

skilled water carriers grow lilies

on our river bank estate

for the orange pollen I dust on my sex.

Because of his suspicion fresh water

has become the leachate of legal wrangling.

My husband hates children.

He cleanses them from in-stream islands

and measures their dry weight against alimony.

He split the basket carrying shingle

to the breeding ground, damming the flow.

Only driftwood remains for anglers to fillet.

He claims river, lake and sea,

sucks on water segments

and leaves me to dry birth.

I hide his child, my mustard seed.

She and I eke out a living gathering

the remains of rain.

Knitting Lessons

My mother’s left hand

is an anarchist.

My mother’s left hand

holds a cigarette

like a movie star.

My mother’s left hand

teaches a stroke patient

to button her shirt.

My mother’s left hand

peels an orange

for her daughter.

My left hand is a goat

useless except for

the subversive underground

knitting my mother’s

left hand taught me.

Rosa Hughes-Currie

I Am Trying My Best

I often think about how Emmy Noether

would not approve of me.

Her visions, Her wild hair,

she who was kept out of universities

for that terrible crime

of having a uterus and not using it.

What would she think of me

strolling into laboratory

at ten thirty leaving early

 for a community meeting?

No, no and my head

like a bowl of porridge that needs

to have her theorem

explained over and over.

When I am strong

I know it is good

that now a woman like me

 is allowed even paid!

To look hard at the universe

a woman like me

that is not so single-minded one that,

if expelled from a German university

for enjoying bagels,

would not shrug

and invite students to talk about maths

at her house even if they wore Nazi uniforms.

Emmy you are wonderful,

but you are not my hero.

You are just someone

I am very glad existed.

The Other Woman

I am scared of you

when you drink spirulina smoothies

and talk about yoga.

I am an ogre

eating grease single and hideous

do you think so?

Crying myself to sleep.

I am scared of you

when you tell me you have never gotten yourself off!

Jesus Christ

You say It means you can't be single

for more than 6 months

Jesus Christ

I feel like I am going to be alone forever

now not with dread just me

and my hand in my double bed.

Rebecca Nash

Calm Down

And you,

What I would like to say to you

Is try not to fret

And also,

I’d like to hold you while you are sleeping

But all you do is repeat like a barking dog

What are we to do?

What are we to do?

And I have to say

Hire a clown

Throw money and candy

And stamp our feet in the amoral rain

And open our mouths wide

And let it all in

The cocks of all the men

And the pain of all the world

And all the right wing news

Until we gag

And we can lie small and screaming

Like a clitoris

Ready for the asking.

But you brewed beer in the kitchen

And told me, husky and broken

God I love a fresh breeze breathing down my neck

It’s much better than you.

Sweating and panting,

And trying to paint words when it is too dark to see.

Kimberley Holmes is a Christchurch Poet who loves to spend her time weaving words into imaginary worlds. Recently competing in both the Christchurch Writer's Festival Survivor Poetry and in the Christchurch Poetry Slam, as well as being a feature at Dr Sketchy's Christchurch's literary themed event, already she has made a place for herself in the local scene. She is known to many as both a contributor and passionate supporter of poetry throughout New Zealand. In August Kimberley released her chapbook of poetry titled, 'There is no rehab for poetry addicts'. Detailing the wonderful, woeful and sometimes ridiculous art of being a poet-heart.

Rosa Hughes-Currie is studying at the university of life but also at the University of Canterbury. She is learning to become a scientist and a good person. If you are in a pinch, she will lend you her deodorant. She will help you or your children with their maths homework.

Rebecca Nash was born in Auckland in 1988. She relocated to Lyttelton via Dunedin and Dublin for the love of the chilled empty sea. She divides her time between writing, baking cakes obsessively, and drinking whiskey with Lyttelton's mottled madmen. Samuel Beckett is her favourite writer though she has a very soft spot for Keats, presumably due to her Grandfather's repeated and emphatic quotation of his works. So far she has had two poems published in the first issue of a journal called Minarets, one in the paper, and one on a Phantom Billstickers poster. Things are looking up.