Card Games
Aleksandra Lane (Massey University, New Zealand)
.
.
I was just about to take some liquid
nitrogen, because no problem
ever lurks in steam, when Bob says
.
let’s play some nude card games. Steaming, of course
I said no. But there are cards and card games:
nothing dirty, nothing too out there. Just
.
hands and touching, here and there. Touching
the way we touch and go a mesmerising disaster.
Look at all the papers out there going for it. Swirling
.
around town. I knew some of them by name.
They were great for ironing out truths. I guess
all the oxygen and trees made them appear stiff
down here. But let’s play.
.
Forget the tear gas. The lilts. Shoves
and pushes. Touching we let the world stay solid. And
the world touches back, gently, lovingly, in lieu
of disasters.
.
.
Aleksandra Lane completed her MA in Creative Writing at the IIML (Victoria University, Wellington, New Zealand) in 2010, and was awarded the Biggs Poetry Prize. Her poems have appeared in various online and print journals, as well as two poetry collections in Serbia. Her book Birds of Clay will be published by Victoria University Press in 2012. She is currently doing a PhD in English (creative writing) at Massey University in NZ.
