Mercedes Webb-Pullman

Tatari

 

 

illegal 

 

between tightrope and teeter

tuned to the pitch

linking crystal and shatter

she lives on the membrane

where change happens

this becomes that

 

she follows where you travel

lives where you settle

her family is your family

your God is one

she sings

songs in the alien corn  

 

why doesn’t

she belong?

 

First appeared in Dove Tales 2017

 

 

 

what is Kurdistan?

 

avoid checkpoints and borders

drift like thought through no-man’s-lands

stay out of everyone’s way

marked for extinction

 

follow the dance of the stars 

through God’s garden of sand and 

rock and no go zones

the water calls your liquid bones

 

hawks that fly 

over endless desert

through far-stretching peaks

Kurds

 

have no place on maps

but still have a name

 

First appeared in Dove Tales 2017

 

 

 

We’re all refugees, Kevin says

 

Early this summer refugees began to appear at our beach. Kevin says you can tell refugees by their birthmarks which are not like ours. They also have six toes. 

 

They walk around our village in pairs or small groups in clouds of strange languages. They stare at our houses and hills full of trees as if they recognize them, though they’ve never been here before. They often go inside our church where children who peer through windows say they take pictures of each other behind the altar where only priests should be. 

 

When they first appeared we had a plague of seven-spotted ladybirds which are a sign of welcome. Except smaller and darker like inside an old curled photo. We have to take pills before bed now. Kevin says our duty is to save things. Kevin says they’ve come too late.

 

Included in ‘Manifesto Aotearoa’ editor Emma Neale, Otago University Press April 2017 and Dove Tales 2017

 

 

 

Lorca’s bones Caserna de la Guardia Civil Vizna 

 

in the dark courtyard

Lorca appears

out of the shadows

that hold him

 

he comes as ash

as a puff of dust 

gusts spread him

over the land

 

his tender pen

attacked giants

by this final wall

something small began

 

out of these bones

we build him

 

First appeared in Riverbabble 30, Winter Solstice 2017

 

 

 

‘We light the fire so everyone can bake bread’

     (Jose Marti)

 

She brushes a loaf pan with butter,

measures flour and yeast,

dreams of scarlet petals that open

slow like blood blossoms to disclose

an important role in bread-making,

ferment and growth. 

 

Carbon dioxide flares inside 

where dough feeds, gold flashes 

like finger-cymbal clashes

and bubbles form its texture.

 

She tips flour, yeast, and salt into a bowl

dreaming of home, timber and glass

that grow from the cliff, part of sky

and mixes well to combine, 

 

makes a well in the centre, adds water.

Each flowered room leads to another -

books, carpets, music – each window

needs to be lukewarm to activate;

too hot, it can kill. 

 

She glimpses burning corpses, dreams

of fleeing in her pink boots

as she stirs with a wooden spoon

then squeezes dough in her hands,

runs along a path of stepping-stones, 

treacherous and mossy, into water,

 

turns onto a lightly floured surface

and kneads for 8-10 minutes until

she picks up a coin, a key, a cup,

lets the dice lie; odds adjust

until smooth and elastic.

 

Kneading distributes yeast evenly;

she sees a clear lake in a mountain

meadow, echoing sky. Beside her

gluten in the flour strengthens

until the dough springs back.

A passer-by pauses, asks for water.

 

She stares into the face of death,

shapes the dough in a ball,

greases a bowl with butter.

He looks so ordinary. He looks 

like her. She turns the dough over, 

coats its surface in grease

to stop it drying out as it rises.

 

She feels a procession carry her 

like flotsam, then disappear

as she covers the bowl with

plastic wrap in a warm corner.

 

She goes alone to the locked gate.

She doesn’t need her key.

The dough doubles in size

and as she punches it down

she hears a riverside gathering,

slow ritual of word and song.

 

Again she kneads it until smooth

and returned to original size.

She gives her coin away, stares up

at unfamiliar star’s cold glitter

then halves the dough, shapes each

equally into the greased loaf pans.

 

She struggles to remember skies

dissolving in butterfly clouds,

lightly brushes the loaves with water

and poppy seeds, to rise as before.

 

Here is eternity: nebula births,

exploding matter laser strikes

in a preheated oven for 30 minutes

or until cooked through, golden brown.

 

White spectrum-shifts through time 

to red, crust forms around holes

turned out onto a wire rack

and allowed to cool.

 

 

 

Mercedes Webb-Pullman is New Zealand's most published poet and the author of the upcoming collection Tatari (Hammer & Anvil Books, 2020).