HEBE KEARNEY
‘The Big One’
on the 15th anniversary of the 4.9.10 Christchurch earthquake
our hair was swept into side fringes &
uggs hugged our thighs –
we felt the same inside.
the world
meant one thing sleeping & when
we woke
we lived other people’s lives.
it was an earthquake of chimneys, they fell & splurged
red-hard across rooves. no one
stopped breathing & we thought
luck was a lasting thing.
oh, alas,
senseless ephemerality.
we marvelled, considering
if people had been there…
the
brick-bile buried streets
god knows…
trick is
he did. hubris
didn’t die with the Greeks.
Rūaumoko roiled,
languishing irony
& then all again
& then all again
& then…
we talked about
unprepared
not supposed to happen here as if
we knew now
we did not know.
EQC chatter became watercooler & slowly
mundanity hitched its claws
in extraordinary experience.
everyone
was so fucking angry about
looters as if
the very earth did not seem traitorous.
the 12 year old I was wrote
hope is a cheap thing
in all my diaries, but I didn’t understand
not really,
not yet.
we were so sure
our little marks scratchings we made
loving hearts
would endure or recover
how pure
dreams of linearity.
we can re-forget
so easily,
but all our bodies,
the ones which breathed there,
hum with collapse.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Hebe Kearney is a poet from Ōtautahi who calls Tāmaki Makaurau home, and whose work been widely published online and in print. They are the founder of Blackout Poetry Aotearoa, through which they love promoting found poetry. You can follow their antics on Instagram @he__be, and @blackoutpoetryaotearoa.