Title: Sport 41: 2013

Publication details: Fergus Barrowman, 2014, Wellington

Part of: Sport

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Sport 41: 2013

Stefanie Lash — from Kreutz Sungrazers Family Tree

page 236

Stefanie Lash

from Kreutz Sungrazers Family Tree

Rumour Terminator

I slip my hands inside
the little red trees of my lungs.
I am my own cork vest.
I am my own rain of comets.

I try not to think of Kronos,
but I too need to ice and lick the moment.
On Christmas morning the last gift was from him.
It was a sickle, just like his.

Once I held a knife and looked at it for a very long time.
A street surfaced, brick by brick,
and I walked down it without breathing.
Thunder—look up: a whale slowly somersaulting through the sky.

page 237

Patient Zero

Then my skin started growing back on me in curlicues.
In section, I looked quilled.
I truly hit the iceberg, and its name was Attrition.
Then I grew wings to cover my face.
I could produce a hint of green lightning.
And I crackled, because I grew a barky carapace around every vein.
Then, as though Metatron, I sat down in my life.
Verily I was like a wheel within a wheel and not my own governor.
The Stronghold was off duty the day this bolide detonated
and made me both the colony and the chattel
and introduced the rarefied germ, who has four faces, and presides
      over nations.

Kreutz Sungrazers Family Tree

On September 16 someone saw the comet about 4º west of the sun, moving very quickly towards that luminary. Her Majesty’s Astronomer at the Cape agreed it was exceptionally bright. At perihelion it was only one light-second away. A photographer saw it, and took its photo without asking. In the future, Ralph Hotere saw it and painted it. Te Whiti saw it, and became the first person in New Zealand to use the telephone. It was called Orongomai. This comet was really Orongomai II, the original having hit Taranaki and flattened its top. Orongomai II ran for six months, a native Sword of Damocles for the Native Minister, pursuing him from Parihaka to Dunedin. Threatened yet? Shortly, the Colonial Secretary took an interest and produced an outbreak of his emblematic blue correspondence. We keep those letters with a skull, and a weapon used in a murder you’ve definitely heard of.