MARIA MCMILLAN is a librarian activist tea-drinker who lives in Wellington and writes mostly poetry.




       Monster

       i
       I chose a young one that would not be missed
       All twisted and bland.
       Years he’d been there, years more ahead.
       He was nothing, the bits that belong
       had never really come together,
       he hung there pretending
       while the others did everything,
       spooned slop, wiped, murmured into
       his dumb ears he lay blinking blink
       blink and drooling. What’s wrong with a pillow?
       Only some fool medicine meant he’d made it
       and I needed meat.

       ii
       It had been so long. My hunger a huge thing
       God-like and I was nothing to it.
       You think it happens in your belly but
       it happens on the soft hill around your feet.
       It rises like heat, like seed of grass thrashed
       til you wear a cloud of it, shimmering,
       clinging about you, it moves when you move.

       iii
       I skulked about in the messy bits. Starved.
       They saw me and thought I was a bad feeling.
       I swear it was not me. Though I had every reason
       I could not do it. It was the seed swarming about
       that suddenly settled, stilled, took my shape.