Live Encounters Poetry & Writing Volume One Nov-Dec 2026.
Saint Sebastian, poems by Kit Willett.
Saint Sebastian
You could bind my hands and suspend them
above my head like an eager student,
and it wouldn’t be gay.
You could pierce me with your arrows—
or anything, for that matter—
and it wouldn’t be gay.
I could twist my body toward you—
relax my shoulders and greet you openly,
wide as the arms of a long-lost friend,
outstretched as the fingers of a merchant—
and it wouldn’t be gay.
I could look up before I die—
long eyelashes batting with faux-innocence,
God’s many names on my lips—
and enter heaven when you enter me—
and still, it wouldn’t be gay.
We could have fun—me, with my hands bound
only at the wrist, and you, with your inexhaustible
supply of arrows—
Duet
Imagine if one day
out on the wild grass
and under the still
and scattered clouds
the tūī heard your guitar
and opened his throat
in harmony.
Together, you would sing
an ancient song,
each with your own part.
The whio would splash
in a distant stream,
and the wind
would chime
a wooden pipe,
and the world
will remember
when we sang
together.
The size of the world
Sometimes the world grows small
and I am confined to this room
with its frames on its walls.
The pastel cat sleeps on the shag blanket
and the plants drink thirstily.
A hand, my own, opens a window
and some of the incense musk dissipates.
It is on these days, with the sound
of distant thunder, that I feel
there is a limit to my imagination.
And sometimes the world grows large,
and the poppies cry out to be smelled,
and the cat preens to be pet,
and the expanse of the sky exalts
in endless, open freedom.
It is on these days, when the birds
sing like car alarms and chainsaws,
that I miss the quiet comfort
of the smaller days.
Today, I feel like the world is both
impossibly large and limiting:
out one window, the rain has come;
the other, nothing but blue.
I am both art and frame—
laundry and lemon tree—
stasis and motion—and neither.
So here I will sit and write
or lie and think until I discover
how to be the right size for the world.
© Kit Willett
Kit Willett (he/they) is a bisexual poet, doctoral student, Third Order Franciscan, and executive editor of the Aotearoa poetry journal Tarot. His debut poetry collection, Dying of the Light, was published by Wipf and Stock imprint Resource Publications in 2022.