New Zealand Fiction
I issued a complaint to the Ministry of Lost Causes
They responded: tena koe %clientName we’re sorry to hear
you were upset, but our staff keep flying away;
the earth is too heavy, their shoes are too light.
Nga mihi,
%staffMember
All these stories by straight old white men;
we need new voices, new perspectives—
like me, a young gay white man.
The future is here: it is %currentGeneration.
I’m not sure I can tell you
It’s a sorta fucky thing
galloping, downwards
indigent, collapsing
welt-foot, bareback
fragments of bone
we lost at night.
Does that make sense?
No but okay, there’s heat right?
There’s this instra-us wiring
that bends when we walk;
that skeletons the silence.
Flashbulbs and nitrate-stink
and little pieces of the night
and all that, you know?
Okay yeah sorta but more like—
the smell of lightning/the taste of a nosebleed
illuminating our frames as we stumble forward.
It’s not a thing I have words for.
It’s just a thing, you know?
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