New verse by Wellington writer James Brown
End
For five fucking years and fuck
knows how many fucks
he was fucking my friend and
she was fucking my husband.
Angry? Do I sound angry?
These things happen. That’s what he said.
Marriage is a journey and
sometimes you reach the end.
Thanks for that. But you can’t just turn
your feelings off like a tap, can you?
The quiet evenings drip long
into the night. How do you change
a fucking faucet? I hate him most
for being only practically right.
From the new collection of verse Floods Another Chamber by James Brown (Victoria University Press, $25), available at Unity Books.
James Brown
'Leadership Material' is from James Brown's new collection Slim Volume (Te Herenga Waka University Press, 2024). His Selected Poems appeared in 2020. He still reads, writes and cycles in Wellington.
