Michael Hall 2013 – TURBINE

MICHAEL HALL

I used to wear childhood
as if it was 1979,
uncertainty hanging awkwardly
like a small yellow raincoat

from the cloak room hook;
a mini series about the Holocaust
was on TV; music had gone disco;
the decade like the sky dripping

onto the wooden floor.
I wrote a story about our futures.
I wrote that some days the clouds
wore dark aprons across the plain

like farmers, standing at evening, hosing
down the emptied yards, dreaming
they were loose forwards in the rain.
I wrote that the sheds

looked like distant solar systems. I wrote
that I dreamt our hearts would descend
like spaceships in the dark.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Michael Hall has been published in NZ and international journals, including Landfall, Meanjin, and Queens Quarterly. He lives in Dunedin.