Definition: mother / graffiti / artist
from Contents Under Pressure (2019 Pūkeko Publications)
Dec 15 ● min read ●
This isn’t the beginning, but somewhere in the middle;
she’s clambering the leftover scaffold like the flying fox
on YouTube she saw scaling a sky-tree, gaining the
necessary height to fly. According to Wiki, she is:
a woman in relation to children to whom she has given /
is giving / will give birth
At the necessary height, she takes the cans from her
coat — obsidian, coral, cobalt, viridian — and places
them in a row along a plank, smoothed by daytime
swarms of builders, boxing, sawing, making safe. This
A4 page is a plan she sellotapes to the porous wall:
a small graph (graffito, singular, masculine)
of primitive scratches
She squeezes pelvic-floor, fists, certain parts of the
cerebrum tight shut, pops a plastic lid open. The ball
rattles, her arm unstiffens under the layers she will
settle to blend and reveal that she:
creates pictures, a profession
this — she practises breathing the parting air —
confession to the night.
***
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