Dunedin Depression Dunedin Daydreams Dunedin Delights
We always stop at this beach to look for shapes on the shore marvel at the clever camouflage
Velvet rock and whipping seaweed We wish we lived here instead of the side of the hill where there is no sun but all moon
Where the train coughs over gull bones Thin as twigs on autumn lawns
And the ships are tugged to and fro
It’s too busy too funny for ancient animals Here it gives us
Dunedin Depression
Our window looks out on the hills with alopecia And the harbour with the green and red lights We wonder at how close the whales are We probably look like the dodgy street
They avoid on their way back home
I did see a whai trapped in the estuary once Waited with it till high tide when
It flew out beneath the bridge and
Probably never came back
It gets tiring
Lying on a carpet long overdue a vacuum
Old hairs tangling in greasy live hairs
Black mould on the window sills
The sky is chimney smoke I try to pretend I am Inside Dark Academia fanfiction waiting Outside the public library under the
Naked tree
I am a starless sky an oily road at 2am
Prone to
Dunedin Daydreams
Dragged into nightwater by a silent leopard seal
Eye locked on the full moon a beacon of hope maybe I can fall back in love with this place if I practise witchcraft every night and get my learners licence
It’s so easy to just walk everywhere but now I need those beaches that take too long to walk to so
I’ll learn to drive in the industrial area and get a Rob Roy Reward after
It’s just winter blues out here but then the cherry blossoms powder their faces and pound softly on the door and then the daffodils scream at you and then all of a sudden things begin to feel just right again and we are swarmed with
Dunedin Delights
When the grass has grown waist high and the mice stop chewing in the walls
When the kereru are so fat they bend the branches to the footpaths and the broom flowers pimple the sand dunes
When we kanikani in the Botans with the paradise ducks and pounamu cracking our collar bones When we meet for generous G&Ts at WOOF bar with glitter on our eyelids and stumble home along harakeke paths finally cut correctly
When we go to the rocks near the beach where the ground opens at the caress of our flowering hands and orange clays and red vine ochre wind around our fingers yank us into the whenua to become another clever camouflage another shape on the shore.
Jessica Hinerangi ThompsonCarr is Ngaruahine, Ngati Ruanui, Ngapuhi and Pakeha. She is 28 years old and currently works as an artist, poet, and writer, often under the name Maori Mermaid. Her first pukapuka, ria, was released in 2023.
Contributions to this weekly column are invited from writers south of the Waitaki River. They should be previously unpublished. Please send as an email attachment and include a short autobiographical note. There will be no correspondence over selections. Post to The Weekend Mix, Otago Daily Times, PO Box 517 Dunedin, or email to tom.mckinlay@odt.co.nz.