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Live Encounters Aotearoa New Zealand Poets & Writers April 2023
Con vers at ions About Slips, poem by Kirsty Powell
Con vers at ions About Slips
1.
Flab ba gas ted
Hea dIn theS and Dum bAss
Ver sus
Clim ateCh ange be live er
Sitt ingOn
Op pos iteS ides
O fThe con vers ation
Tal king pas tEach ot her
Nei ther Liste Ning
Wha tWo uld the Lorax sayN ow?
2.
The Lorax watched on
As the nearly last tree
Was concocted into
An unneeded thneed
He threw up his hands
Disappeared with a bang
And left us his sigh post …
‘UNLESS’
And what have we done
Since seventy one
Just fourty two years
Since that Medico Seuss
Bought us the Lorax
Who spoke for the trees
And left us this missive …
‘UNLESS’
Here’s what we’ve done
Us Once-lers sons
With consummate greed
We’ve cut down more trees
Made and discarded
More useless thneeds
Smogged up our bogs
Coked up our souls
The Lorax would call us
‘USELESS’
3.
Slips
of the tongue
Yellow clay slash
Jack the weather
Ripped right out
the cheek of this thing
Tears have fallen down
this raw siren sky river
Another new embolded gully
Can’t look away, can’t not see
can’t unknow these imprinted slips
Useless unless we open our ears
as the ghost of the Lorax still shouts
Unlessunlessunlessunlessunless … un less?
© Kirsty Powell
Kirsty Powell lives in rural South Auckland and enjoys planting trees to prevent coastal erosion when she is not writing poems or short stories. Her debut novel The Strength of Eggshells won the NZ Booklovers Award in 2020.