Iona Winter

Category: poetry

  • paper to water

    i stood in the sea until your words blew away paper to water loosened limbs dissolved broken-smile-missing-teeth-shipwreck-me and i watched as your hollow facts became ensnared by the callous tide

  • vital

    infinite time to reflect on vital things sentient and alive as the sun carves beneath my skin and mandarin segments linger on my tongue, to the tune of childhood lunch-boxes i am like a blackbird lingering at an empty water trough with the promise of being satiated, desire imprinted upon…

  • wairoro

    wairoro brain eggshell taonga how often were you shaken? i lost count at ten now you halt me completely an uneasy witness to a pared back life of overflowing shoeboxes screaming ‘more odds than ends’ with fragility poised on silken threads of broken-up highways that reside in my head  

  • the three

    life love loss exactly the same regardless of where they sit be it lap or throat all three peel back the folds of me exposing a core of bruised and hidden truths

  • keen

    i walk the mist swathed whenua into light captured spiderwebs lakeside swans poke their arses in the air to remind me of what has been stripped bare   homeless people sleep near the bubbling springs at night but come morning are moved on—make way for the tourists, this is not your home  …

  • waterfall

    unobscured mists met the junction of my skin lovingly constriction becalmed   a waterfall-salve of rivulets ran thick with purpose and the promise of you (Picture taken at McLean Falls, Southland, Aotearoa)      

  • moth-wing

    I listen to moth-wings beat against paned glass while rain taps the iron roof and stars are extinguished for the night i recount my deepest fear that i would drown and leave you bereft i remember galaxies familiar as my freckled skin the dust of which has shaped us i listen to moth-wings beat    …

  • Narcissus

    Spring flowers. And those who speak in swathes—almost entirely about themselves. Scented-sweet, until their dripping sap prickles at my skin and feels ugly. Envy marks me, before I am cast adrift. For I cannot reinforce their purported-truth-precipices. Lost reflections, too fathomless to acquiesce. Spring flowers.

  • breeze

    in the city flags hang limp waiting for the breeze to perform fire escape stairwells rust while refuse expands in black plastic dysmorphic bodies move and i cannot catch my breath but at home the wind will rip meat from my bones lifting my gaze from the interior the birds will huddle i realise i’ve always been the one…

  • fall

    iridescent feathers lift from tiny nests and twirl earthwards another season leaves have begun their descent and I wonder where you are   I cannot shape you from the soil but wish it was possible we all need to be anchored to something   the sound of you has taken shape in my mouth moth-wing-beat against paned glass…