New verse by Wellington writer Freya Sadgrove.

Georgie Porgie

I wanna kiss you and make you cry         obviously

I find you dangerously unsentimental     in fact I worry

that you might be harbouring a small violence in your daily life

such as     such as muttering insults at the elderly

or writing scathing reviews of high school plays

or like   discreetly growing a tumour     out of revenge

I require you to learn from my softness     otherwise

I will accidentally learn your hardness         ah

you can’t talk about boys and hardness without thinking about   you know

and you have a really nice   you know

but that’s not the issue at hand   so to speak     not right now anyway

come to my house later         come   to my house

and I will put your   issue     in my hand

it’s not exactly a problem that you don’t love me

it’s just surprising : look at me     I’m startlingly lovely

not visually so much as                   theoretically

I took a lot of cheap advice and now I love myself too much

it offends the elderly and it bores the young

and you     it does something to you     but you don’t like having things done to you

so I stop doing it         I just hover at your bedroom door not doing it

Freya Daly Sadgrove, 2017

The Spinoff Review of Books is brought to you by Unity Books.

The Spinoff Review of Books is proudly brought to you by Unity Books.