carcinisation

I want you to enthuse about light rail and then

lightly rail me

want you to stick around long enough

so I can see you in every light

I daydream about you

and then I nightdream about you too

want to loiter around you like a teen boy

at a skate park

overstay my welcome like a poetry reading

entering its third hour

descending into more and more ridiculous similes

I’ve been laid off from the crush factory

for getting too distracted

all the crushes came out looking like you

it’s for the best as I wanted them all

and the staff discount wasn’t very good

fresh in my unemployment I walk around the city

just to see different things to tell you about

the dogs on the dog part of the beach

and the oystercatchers on the

oystercatcher part of the beach

a cool bug on a heart shaped leaf

kumara returning to the veggie market

the long tail of disaster finally dissipating

a particularly bright moon, which you’ll see

when your sun sets in two hours

the inevitability of my thoughts returning to you like

how animals keep evolving into crabs

independently of each other

and as if by accident

will you write me a letter of support

for my grant funding application

to dedicate more time to the creative practice of kissing

the application budget mostly covers airfares

and expensive airport coffees

to ensure I am properly caffeinated on arrival

and can optimise my time with maximum efficiency

the plane touches down on tarmac

and a woman in hi-vis lines the stairs up

before the door opens and

a wave of new crabs disembarks

evolved just in time for landing

Ash Davida Jane is a writer, editor, and reviewer from Te Whanganui-a-Tara. Their second collection of poems, How to Live With Mammals (Te Herenga Waka University Press), was published in 2021 and won second place in the Laurel Prize. They are a founding editor and publisher at Tender Press and reviews editor for Takahē.