Project: Transit of Venus
Hinemoana Baker - I’d rather be crossing the surface of the sun with you
Hinemoana Baker - I’d rather be crossing the surface of the sun with you
Creaking, I fail to sink, twelve
tons of pig iron in my gut.
An envelope of orders
a restaurant menu
opens in his dry fingers
each edict directs me one
degree at a time. In your
presence I make the sound of
a tympani, a tattoo
needle, the musical stretch
of my elm, my pine, my white
oak and fir, tensioned from my
tops to my futtock shrouds, live
ballast crawling through me like
a bloodstream. I wish I were
the Earl of Pembroke again
dirty with riches for fires
and not the antecedent
of broads who turn up dripping
with clams and zebra mussels.
I’d rather be crossing the
surface of the sun with you.
But somewhere in the strings of
my hair, a small boy, a sharp
loblolly boy, calls out land.