Cy Mathews is a postgraduate student of English Literature at the University of Otago, specialising in contemporary poetry. He is also one of the editors of the online journal Deep South, and has had work published in Critic magazine, Oban '06, and at the Lumière Reader.
Father
was late back from the war. A stone
grew in our mother's head. Like children
the strangers came and sat before the fire. It
was the end, the next morning
laid out at our breakfast table, a line of small white shoes.
Seven of them, they were screeching in the garden, clawing
and pulling at the grass. Our mother
brought us a glass of something. The other
stood in the hall. Something
in a hand. Something
held against a face. Something. Next
morning I am discovered stone dead on the parquet. And I am
discovered stone dead on the pier. And I am
discovered stone dead resting on a stone. Some
thing about the clock and its lateness. Our father,
standing, in the garden light,
in his hand a souvenir
from a place we had never
expected
