Devonport (2.00 pm)

[photograph: Jack Ross (2006)]

A Sunday Walk

Heteroglossia is as close a conceptualization as is possible of that locus where centripetal and centrifugal forces collide …

– Michael Holquist

MTChalk butterfly
VICTORIAetched in the pavement
faded to two wings
an eye open on each

bridge binding up the harbour
sails becalmed
stick-figure
mother
halfway up the slope

… as such, it is that which a systematic linguistics must always suppress.

– The Dialogic Imagination: 4 Essays by M. M. Bakhtin

NORTH· How did you do that?
HEAD· I’ll scrub them when I get home
· Whatever
· Have you had an inspiration?
· Uh
· Get up and stop being stupid
– to a fallen child –

[First published in Poetry NZ 28 (2004): 91].