The Friday Poem: ‘Georgie Porgie’ by Freya Daly Sadgrove
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
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Freya Daly Sadgrove
Freya Daly Sadgrove is a pākehā writer and performer from Te Whanganui-a-Tara, currently living on Gadigal Country in Sydney. She is the engine behind live poetry extravaganza Show Ponies, which has been performing to sold-out crowds throughout Aotearoa and beyond since 2019. Her first poetry collection, Head Girl, was published in 2020 with Te Herenga Waka University Press.
