Abstract
3.8 in Otautahi Gregory Dally (bio) Tectonic plates on which you're perchedhave shifted. Only a fraction.It's a prompt for your next themeas you whisper to talkback. It appears you're taking stockof a host of tremors set to rendan isle of Gondwanathat's already fractured. The night is letting out fantasiesof death as a renewal: historiesvis-à-vis drunkenness loose in the air.You fish for your mate with chopped syllables and consider Maui's lore–those legends commended heart-to-mindand mouth-to-ear in sessionsencircling a fire. From a past you liked, your paramour's voiceis settling. Her myths are remindersto filter your head's rampant excess.She'll bring you around. You shush. It's all in the listening.Rattling the can, she links her Speight's to yours,and vitamins stir. One lingua on anotheris disrupting ideal nutrients. At your vintage, it behooves youto slam propaganda from carpers.A neglected grin is meshed in foam,stilling the curdle of thoughts. [End Page 105] So you launch into the phantom danceof those who've survivedjust to redefinethe most hideous of adjectives, 'mature.' She avoids your question. The nothinggrows urgent. It's a lack of retort which letsher strengthen. She bites on time,and your quiet tempers merge. You're the one to ad lib charm,the kind all mockers love.Inaction is only inertiathat's got you ready, set to hug. [End Page 106] Gregory Dally Gregory Dally has had poetry, fiction, scripts, and other material published in various journals, including Amsterdam Quarterly, Milly Magazine, Popshot Quarterly, and Tarot. He placed first in the poetry category of the 2020 NZSA New Zealand Heritage Literary Awards. His ten-minute plays have been staged in New Zealand and the United States. A recent project involved an effort to create a biographical statement of at least a hundred words as a means to augment his identity. This is a departure from his custom of limiting such items, in accordance with a theory that the content is the issue, rather than the author. Copyright © 2022 Wayne State University Press
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