The Friday Poem: ‘After Lucy Tinakori’s Famous Party’ by Vincent O’Sullivan
New verse by Dunedin writer Vincent O’Sullivan.
After Lucy Tinakori’s Famous Party
I love it that poetry now so possesses the world
it is not possible to play ‘pin the tail’ at a children’s
party without every child being the winner
wherever the tail’s pinned. Space is guaranteed
compliant the way thumb’s fumbling’s inevitably
spot on. Every child comes home
happy, ‘I won just as much as Jane did!’.
There’s as many winning donkeys as smiling
kiddies, what a happy thing to realise so early on!
Only one child slapped (oh, but lightly)
as mum hauls her back to the Humvee
taking her home. Holly, her name, the spoiled
child who refused to play, who shouted, ‘I
know I lost, stop saying I won!’, and twice
on the drive back saw donkeys in paddocks
and tails exactly where she knew they had to be,
and said – slapped for that as well – ‘See? Arse.’
Vincent O’Sullivan, 2018
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Vincent O'Sullivan
Born in Auckland in 1937, Vincent O’Sullivan was the author of the novels Let the River Stand, Believers to the Bright Coast, and All This by Chance. He wrote many plays and collections of short stories and poems, was joint editor of the five-volume Letters of Katherine Mansfield, edited a number of major anthologies, and was the author of acclaimed biographies of John Mulgan and Ralph Hotere. He was the New Zealand Poet Laureate for 2013–2015. In 2000, he was made a Distinguished Companion of the New Zealand Order of Merit, and in 2021 he was redesignated as a Knight Companion of the New Zealand Order of Merit. Vincent died in April 2024.
