TIM SAUNDERS

 

Nothing Ever Happens Around Here

 

I swear I saw Jesus 
standing in the doorway 
of Grubby’s Fish & Chips, 
wearing sandals 
and a Swanndri, 
feeding the masses with battered kahawai 
and a scoop of chips, 
while a couple of kids played cricket 
against the war memorial 
across the road 
and a Fonterra tanker 
smeared the tallest drink in town 
into loose stones. 

Nothing ever happens around here 
you said 
before you left 
and I think 
even Jesus agreed 
as he gnashed his teeth 
and wondered
if there were any pigs 
in the gully 
up behind McKelvie’s 
old woolshed 
where we first met,
the old woolshed 
where all I hear now 
is the silence of pines. 

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Tim Saunders farms sheep and beef in the Manawatū. He has had poetry and short stories published in Turbine | Kapohau, takahē, Landfall, Poetry NZ Yearbook, Best NZ Poems, Headland, Flash Frontier, Broadsheet, Best Small Fictions, RNZ and he also won the 2018 Mindfood Magazine Short Story Competition. Tim placed third in the 2019 and 2020 National Flash Fiction Day Awards, and was shortlisted for the 2021 Commonwealth Short Story Prize. He also won the 2023 Caselberg Trust International Poetry Award and the 2023 RNZ Nine to Noon Short Story Award. His first book, This Farming Life, was published by Allen & Unwin in August, 2020. His second book, Under a Big Sky, was published in August, 2022. 

Return to 2024 contents >