The Friday Poem: Finance by Jenny Bornholdt
Coins in the Trevi Fountain, Rome, Italy. Photo: Getty Images.
A poem by Wellington poet Jenny Bornholdt.
Finance
City bracketed by snow
woollens airborne
in the hall.
Starved, our animal selves
tore grass
from the lawn, bark
from the trees, trotted
to where our children
gnawed the bones of animals
smaller than themselves.
Was this the end
of the world? Of childhood?
This frozenness trapping us
in our adult selves.
Who knew what would
happen next. The film festival,
perhaps? A short about
my father’s handkerchiefs
making their way
in the world. One gone
to a weeping air hostess,
another to the brow of a young man
knocked from his bike. Who knew
where this would lead us.
By evening
we were done,
though the children still ravenous
for food and experience.
Snow lay like a man’s handkerchief
over the hand of a magician.
We expected the coin,
the rabbit, the dove, but nothing . . .
only more snow
and the dollar rising and falling
under cover of darkness.
The Friday Poem is edited by Ashleigh Young. Submissions for The Friday Poem are currently closed and will reopen in May 2020.
Jenny Bornholdt
Jenny Bornholdt is a New Zealand poet. Her most recent poetry collection is Lost and Somewhere Else (2019). She is the author of many collections, including The Rocky Shore (Montana New Zealand Book Award for Poetry, 2009) and Selected Poems (2016), and editor of several notable anthologies, including Short Poems of New Zealand (2018).
