Husk

Poems by Chris Price

Chris Price

• Publisher: Auckland University Press
• Year: 2013
• Print ISBN:
  9781869402662
• eBook ISBN:
  9781775580904
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: European Poetry
• Index: Literature

This a lively and enjoyable first collection of poems by a writer who is well known in the New Zealand literary world and who has published widely in journals. It is a polished, elegant, and mature work. Chris Price's poems are characterized by witty surprises, sudden unexpected shifts of image, and many forms of wordplay. Covering a wide range of interests, themes, and tones, there is an alertness and sense of delight about these poems.

I

The mirror vendor

The mirror vendor carries the day

beneath his arm, bringing hills and horses with him

and on his head at night a moving tray

of stars to be served at the party

of Doña Juanita, packed in their dark ice.

The mirror with the red and gold frame

contains chickens and a small boy

leaning against a dusty blue wall,

disdains the khaki soldiers

trying to blend in with their guns.

Some take him for a thief

but his pale brown palms are clean

as the glass he polishes every day.

Windows regard him jealously

as he passes, giving the Friday girls

a spray of lights from the barber’s shop

under a backward arch of red

and white letters as they leave work

in search of lovers and husbands, their

heels unpicking sequins on the puddled

pavement, a shining path

that leads them safely for this one

enchanted evening into dense

equatorial air, swimming in the mirror vendor’s river.

A drop of mercury

Great-aunt Helen

orbits Emily Way

twenty years of houses, friends

suddenly unfamiliar

she keeps the vertigo

to herself (a drop

of mercury)

walks the shopping trolley

remembers flying

her first Piper Cub

at 35

and a canoe

on the Amazon

(still a secret

from her grand-daughters)

looks at her life

star cooling at the

wrong end

of the telescope

long nights in a room

only gravity listening.

Mexican couple

She loves the milky gaze

the way he looks through her sometimes

from where he’s been.

And he? Also loves, but lacks

concentration.

They try to break

and for a while ‘the hours

were broken’ but

history sticks them back

together, a rough match

until one burns out

in a halo of fire.

Sometimes unhappiness

— his affairs, her operations —

makes a pair perfect

this too is written

in the bestiary of marriage

the elephant, the bleeding ...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half-title
• Title Page
• Table of Contents
• Epigraph
• I
• II
• Acknowledgements
• Copyright