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Despite, two half-drawn people angling themselves

halfway up a water tower. What else in a half-

horse town; a drift of banked stones, a far spit

of ocean with teeth, no way to climb

to the top. Oh but a ladder, tetanus flirt

and fearsome with sign, scribbles of rumour

branding the hide of a life. Someone

jumped/someone drowned/someone was hard-

erased, some hollow kin—recklessly drawn

up for a squint of soft; a coast’s hip or to hug the belly

of the tank, both blue as tourist-trough sky but closer

or further or rusting and just as out of reach. This one time

a hand found the hand that fuck-you’d the wind

and the only awkward balloon let go that day

was the calf all swollen with river: from up there

a party, the most graceful way out. Hey little cow,

at least the ocean has a patient mouth. Let’s be clear

what poisons a leaving; how we have time

will bloat inside the dream. We tread water in the vault

of the world. It’s a bashed tin planet, it’s a life-

long trap. From the inside, sun lances a queasy universe

through rusted holes. Again our nakedness, false with stars.

Ankh Spice had his debut poetry collection, The Water Engine, published in 2021 by Femme Salvé Books. He lives and writes and runs and obsesses over poems and pretty tidewrack in Te Whanganui-a-Tara. Most of his published work lives at www.ankhspice-seagoatscreamspoetry.com