Title: Hard Yards

Author: Tony Beyer

In: Sport 41: 2013

Publication details: Fergus Barrowman, 2014, Wellington

Part of: Sport

Keywords: Verse Literature

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Sport 41: 2013

Tony Beyer — Hard Yards

page 182

Tony Beyer

Hard Yards

1

bones rinsed in the vast
abrasive
washing-machine sea

houses afloat
coast to coast

earthquake flood fire insurrection
you know how serious it is
by who the news sends to cover it

2

WINZ begins
its ready-to-work seminars
with three searching questions

(the obvious other one
about a job
is never asked)

do you have a driver’s licence
do you have a partner
would you pass a drug test today

page 183 understandably
more than 50% of those present
answer no to the third

3

in my sleep I speak
te reo fluently
and engage in a lengthy
rebarbative debate with Parekura Horomia
amicable of course on both sides

perhaps now the most pakeha of poets
is dreaming
dreams in another language
we are closer to a genuinely
bicultural Aotearoa