RACHEL O'NEILL
The place of hates
I dined on uncountable spites, from subatomic spites to those of bold conceptual design. I dabbled in murderous and premature confidences. I fed the boiler of bitterness, and whistled a heinous cry as I passed through any tunnel that had no other side. I flew on wings of ill animus and feathered my bed with an abomination of duck down and disdain. Eventually, I poisoned myself and tied my torso to a gentle tree until leaves withered and sizzled and ricocheted and cramped like an exploding arboretum of dehydrated guts. I danced to the sound of eternal rest, even doing a jig on my own final twitch. I committed acts of excretion. At the end beyond the end I was nominated for a prize and I spat on it.
Rachel O’Neill is a writer, filmmaker and artist based in Te Whanganui-a-Tara, Aotearoa. Their debut book One Human in Height (Hue & Cry Press) was published in 2013. They were awarded a 2018 SEED Grant (NZWG/NZFC) to develop a feature film and held a 2019 Emerging Writers Residency at the Michael King Writers Centre. Earlier poems by O'Neill appear in Best New Zealand Poems 2011 and 2013.
Links
Rachel stans Food Court and Salty for their brilliant zines and events showcasing Aotearoa writing.
‘The children have grown’, Best New Zealand Poems 2013
‘Early growth’, Best New Zealand Poems 2011
Photographer credit: author selfie with Jasper Johns’ ‘High School Days 1969’.