The Friday Poem: ‘Some of my mother’s bedtime stories live on in me’ by Simone Kaho
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A poem from Simone Kaho’s forthcoming collection HEAL!
Some of my mother’s bedtime stories live on in me
A fat cowboy ghost horse who flew, with the power of being unintentionally scary
Veni vidi vici – actions that cannot be undone
The girl who slows down time, so giants chasing her think she’s dead
The narrative says she is safe this way
But the little girl listening didn’t trust seeming dead would be enough
A pig or the wolf with a kazoo, making music starting with zee, either heading towards the
pigs’ house to eat them or escaping the wolf
The woman discombobulated in the washing machine
emerging and slapping her own ears
A worm in a stripy sock who’s allowed to eat apples
and no one is repulsed and cuts the worm out, or throws the apple away
The girl fighting priests
The girl fighting big cats
The girl with oil and flowers in her wounds
Giant worms living under the mountain, swimming beneath children in a boat, who are most grotesque before you know what they are, but need to be believed that they’re there
Vampires who smell you through walls at night
you smell the most like yourself to them
The most you ever will (which disarms you)
as they mangle your neck
as you try to stay yourself
And know if you’re alive or not
or your head has fallen forward
so the reader can’t see your face
HEAL! (Saufo`i Press) is published on 16 September.
The Friday Poem is edited by Chris Tse. Submissions are currently closed.
Simone Kaho
Simone Kaho is a Tongan and Pākehā poet, creative non-fiction writer, and director. Her first poetry collection Lucky Punch was published in 2016. She has a master’s degree in poetry from Te Herenga Waka—Victoria University of Wellington's International Institute of Modern Letters (IIML) and was awarded the IIML 2022 Emerging Pasifika writer in residence. Simone directed the 2019 web series ‘Conversations’ for E-Tangata and now works as a writer/director for Tagata Pasifika. She is an active voice in Alison Mau's #metooNZ project. (Author photo credit: Raymond Sagapolutele.)
