Erin Mercer grew up in Dunedin, New Zealand where she
spent all of her childhood either in or beside the
ocean. She rarely wore shoes and knew the hills and
the peninsula like her own face.
A strange restlessness gripped her at nineteen, and
she set off to explore Britain, where she sat in a lot
of village pubs and ate a lot of pudding.
At twenty she packed up three suitcases and moved to
New York City, where she studied drama at The American
Academy of Dramatic Arts. There followed a period of
predictable bohemianism, during which she acted in
theatre and independent films, waited tables and fell
in love.
She is now thrilled to be returning to her homeland
(with love in tow)to complete her final year of
undergradute studies at Otago University, where she
will once again walk the sands of Aramoana and
Karitane and try to avoid shoes...
today
I voyaged
an hour and a half on the subway
as it grumbled to Coney Island
before backtracking
local
to the city
a woman's conversation
sad black face
liquid eyes
talking
of wanting
to pass through time
just like that!
perfect
tiny zen phrases
falling from her
weary lips
time past
time spent
killed time
saved time
the sun always rising
setting
inevitably destined
she was not smiling
her fingers weaving
our beautiful
inconsequntial
days
always tomorrow
soon
soon
endless reassurances
promises
of utopia to come
smith street with it's low
brick red
horizon
denizens and dens
amber lit
sparse and gentle
a girl idling by the jukebox
studied me silent with red wine
and asked
are you alone here?
a visitor from Cape Cod
slightly the worse for wear
van gogh conversations over table tops
and he is a million miles away
I am a million miles away
he stares at his empty beer
well
what to say
that has not
been said
before
it is the month of the fiesta!
and we eat to celebrate
eat
in dark evenings
wine against our lips
it is the season of slumber!
and we smoke at parties
in blue stairwells
gazing enviously
at rooftops
at realities
we long
to know
it is the year of the snake!
or monkey?
and we brave the light
of dusk shadow
with only our youth
and upturned faces
purposefully
turning the other cheek
expertly
closing both eyes
AMERICA
in America
cities like cold
bloodless livers
gasp their last
and language
in a skipping
joyful orgy
passes over
warm capricorn tropics
jeremiads
and the greatest of all nations
united!
overflows with wealth
and cardboard boxes
voluptuous
amid the flora and fauna
of wheeling
light shows
scud missile
sculptures
and a million
dying births
ELVEN LORDS
there was an energy to the night as I viewed my
imaginings washed over black screens with
elven lords and magic totems reminding me of
back then
when I was sixteen, seventeen,
wearing dragon pendants and unicorns and flowing lace
blouses like some fading displaced princess
when the Lady of Shalott floated so beautifully dead and
Ophelia drowned in flowers and I
at six or seven
making fairy bundles of petals wrapped in faintly furry
dock leaves
pushing them secretly
between cracks
in the skirting
