SONJA YELICH

Foxholes — Nooses

There was no accident to the amount of whoredom
she could afford to try at night in the morning or
afternoon say in front of a tv screen probably or laptop.

*

The Logic never stacked up &
outside the Hotel was the usual pandemonium
of traffic & a picking wind going on & the crush of the day.

*

It is Red & with pleasure how many places
the legs can bend & together
So she took it plumbed from every right angle
in honey & fractured harmony.

*

until she got bored.

*

Through the heat of the days
who blended into weeks or however long
things are she’d wait to rope them in.

*

Each morning to her door The Tribune
Or Daily or Herald would arrive in its
black & white captions & coloured shots
of marine hellfire.

*

over the euphrates smoke rose — 
& people were being driven from their
homes & minds. A Cobra Chopper
up & fell. The day was an accident.

*

By night she noticed each Hotel Suite
looked more like a Foyer than before
& all the marbly tiles were mirrors
reflecting the slip & tick of her steps.

*

where nouns would shloop into view —
a Lone Corporate Cab or Executive Taxi
& Dim Lobbies with their sunk couches &
Vermouth — where she might venture.

*

lightly she would address each Receptionist
or Cleaner with patience & the fluid trick of linguistics.
to wait for a key a room a number & a swipe
card for the power.

*

Lo & tall — she’d enter to a fridge with its mixes
a bed in King cupboards drawers nuts & small
bars of mint & baby champagne.

*

Where she’d log onto Embeds
whose risks were photos & handfuls
of words & insurgents or injuries.
Foxholes & Nooses.

*

Who she’d call up or dial
through the stars through
the satellite dishes right through the stratosphere to there —
the middle sandy east nestled into the marines’ necks —
in squadrons & battalions & Lexus Tanks

*

Time is a cheap Dove.
& this room has matching bathrobes on hooks or knobs
in white in pairs in dual velour.

*

& when she slept it was near the middle of the bed
in ravish sheets of JetStream shades –
the room was hot with its whirring screens
some guardian inches of robert fisk &
her nakedness.

*

at 23.41 she flicked into Dreams.

Sonja Yelich was born in Auckland in 1965. Her first collection, Clung, published by Auckland University Press, won the 2005 Best First Book in the Montana New Zealand Book Awards. She lives in Auckland with her partner & their four children.

Yelich comments: ‘Embeds fascinate me. So I totally stretched the idea and embedded a woman into a dim lit hotel suite, complete with a mini bar and super king bed. And then I sexed her up a bit by giving her all the gadgets she’d need to log on to everything in sundry. And finally – so as to completely overload her I threw in a Lexus tank, Robert Fisk, Marines & some Big Dailies – of course a computer screen goes without saying. And from the safety of a Five Star Hotel Chain I put her in the front line. The poem is undoubtedly voyeuristic.’

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