Helen Lowe won an inaugural Robbie Burns poetry prize in 2003 (Rain Wild Magic) and Australia's A2O (Argos) competition in 2007. She has been published in the NZ Listener, A Fine Line, Blackmail Press, Bravado, JAAM, Poetry NZ, Takahe, the Christchurch Press, Yellow Moon and foam:e (Australia), and broadcast on National Radio. Helen has also had work anthologised in New Zealand and the United States and her first novel, Thornspell, is published by Knopf (Random House, USA).
do you?
full moon swims up
into amethyst sky,
a car engine fades
along unsealed road . . .
the wind touches your face
with ghost fingers, whispers
my name into your ear …
do you remember,
do you – forget
even to remember,
do you?
Tomo
There's a gift shop
and a café—buses parked close
to the limestone mouth.
Air gusts out,
cool—the crowd
breaks and eddies,
he moves
with the current,
is borne
toward the dark—turns
for one look back:
She averts her face,
has no coin to buy passage
under the earth.
