BRENT KININMONT
Morphine
Is it measured
by feathers?
By soft letters
in a lyric?
She thinks
it's by kisses
eyelashes make.
Twenty-three
Twenty-four
Twenty-five
The mattress lies down
beneath her.
The magpies
inside her
open wide
to wake her,
think better of it.
Except for a year in Wellington completing a masters in creative writing, Brent Kininmont has for the past decade lived in Tokyo, working mostly as a journalist. His poems have appeared in Landfall, Sport, Turbine and elsewhere.
Kininmont comments: ' "Morphine" is a memory of my mother, though it once had a different title and was about my child sleeping.'
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