Catherine Kelsey

Catherine Kelsey is a secondary school teacher (English Literature). She is English but now lives and works in New Zealand. She has 3 small children. Catherine started reading and writing poetry as a mother, to see how language worked. She wanted to express the way she saw things, both as a woman and a human being - about the complexities of the passions we feel and the tensions – brutality and love. She wrote memoire after separating from her husband. She was reading Raimbeau at the time – a French Poet who dwells on the erotic in unusual ways.

memoire

Earth breathes. Bounces jewelled beads

Upon star-shaped ferns, massed verdigris.

Shimmering mermaid-like

She clasps her tail; scarlet dragonfly settles

On her toes – envies a mosaic

Blue-bottled bushes; ochreous marigolds,

Pohutakawas summer dressed; blushing

Rubescent flowers, sanguine flesh

under ‘a heat-wrung sky’.

Embalmed. The old school bus

A shrine of floral fantasy kindles,

A marquetry of erotogenic ardour;

His and hers, chiselled together;

Pillowed on Japanese cushions, in which moonlit rivers

Unending flow and peonies, rich mature

Bend their imagination;

Silently folding into each other,

limbs intertwined – the linden and  old oak.

Sleeping child stirs, murmurs.

Rain falls. Like Chinese Whispers;

Soft-noted requiem

Treads, disturbing harmony

On the battered tin roof

Spectostropic green light flickers,

As delirious pink skin whispers close

Glistening under light-fingered breeze’s caress

Fools call lust.

Pale fire; iridescent

clings to fluted bark

Tortured trees, crucified against the stem

Of the hill, madly erotic

The black horse leaps

Dances, plummets, plunges,

Brutally consumes floral ardour;

Moonbells leaping; peeling with laughter

Outside; a pig crunching.

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