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 LandfallSportTurbine and elsewhere.

Kininmont comments: ' "Morphine" is a memory of my mother, though it once had a different title and was about my child sleeping.'

Poem source details >

 

Links

New Zealand Electronic Text Centre: Sport 36
Turbine 07