MICHAEL HALL has had poems published in a number of publications, including Landfall, Snorkel, Poetry NZ, and NZ School Journal. He has completed a manuscript of poems, provisonally titled Map to the Next Room.


       Autumn Evening, at 15

       The cows locked
       away for the night,

       the gate shut—

       it’s just the track
       and fading paddocks

       and the beginnings
       of a return
       on the bike

       at 15

       toward the distant
       light

       of the shed,
       a kind of star with
       a yard

       that no astronomers have found yet.
       It’s only us
       out here.


       Dunedin, Summer Evening

       Striding down
       Lock St hill—
       looking out toward the city, the harbour
       its long legs tucked
       up on the green couch

       of the peninsula.
       All the way to a distant ankle of ocean.

       And a little closer to the line into night,
       the approach of a vast dark soon.
       The long empty details to South America.

       Otherwise, the sky cast low, and still—
       barely a breath in the warm

       glottis of the south.

       No one about.
       Just the slant of light and reddening clouds
       against the windows.

       A punk cat crouches under a car on the road side.
       The thump of a tennis ball

       against a white wooden garage.
       A heart. And a child’s shout
       behind.