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 Bulletin is The Spinoff’s acclaimed daily digest of New Zealand’s most important stories, delivered directly to your inbox each morning.