SIOBHAN HARVEY is a poet whose work has been published in numerous international magazines and anthologies, including Kaupapa: New Zealand Writers, World Issues, Landfall, Poetry New Zealand (featured poet, issues 33), Poetry Salzburg (Austria) and Snorkel. She also works as a freelance literary journalist for The Listener, Landfall and The Dominion Post.


       Clavicle

       A bone
       is never just a bone.
       This one is a memory,
       a storyteller.

       It spins its yarn,
       little Rumplestiltzken,
       into scapula, humerus, radius,
       ulna and metacarpus.

       Its skeleton outline
       recounts your body’s
       assembly and breakage.

       A stormy night;
       a bed; a fall:
       it’s a nursery rhyme,
       it’s true.

       The soft landing
       that forgot to catch you;
       matai floorboards;
       tears during x-ray;
       fibres that knit as delicately
       as your granny glove-making:
       these are another story.

       When you’re grown,
       I’ll reconstruct them
       into a fable. It’ll fix
       a smile to your face.

       Of things unspoken:
       how I slumbered
       as you tumbled;
       how blame calcifies;
       how a mother’s guilt
       is the only thing
       that fails to mend –
       these, I’ll suffer alone.