The Marie Surveys

‘I completely  failed  to touchdown,’  I  told my  girlfriend last week as she slept, ‘you wouldn’t believe the pressure I’m under to bring back soil samples.’ I dream of showing her my parking-orbit technique and sharing with her the indescribable views of the Ocean of Storms – but she can know nothing of my unmanned moon activity. My only  solace? I  write  her intimate letters. Not one reaches her, of course – I signed a binding confidentiality agreement. To date there are approximately 600 epistles mouldering in a directory known as the ‘Marie Surveys’. There’s hope my girlfriend will  intuit what’s going on. Tonight after dinner I made meteor-like orbits around her in the kitchen and she told me she experienced these as hovering. Sometimes I almost falter. This is followed by a visit to the workplace psychologist, Wendy. The flare of desperation in her voice as she cautions me against disclosure reminds me of being in the control room when senior staff are under immense pressure to ground a cadet-less spacecraft.

It's 1920

A person comes around the corner toward you. It’s the person you most want to see. You are in love with them. For this exact same reason  you  hide behind a van of produce.  There is an annoying poet reciting verse on the corner. The poet says, ‘Being shaken awake, surrounded  by ice, a neighbour to violence.’  You  want to tell the poet  where to shove this claptrap,  but you remember  just in time that you are a Church of England clergyman.

I dream I bury a machine

Your father can’t see the person he’s closest to, my mother, the machine tells me. She looks comfortable resting in the pit. The sun hums on her metal forehead. I thought I’d hate being buried alone, she says, but there’s actually a lot going on here. Dinner, my father says. Mince? I say. Ok, he says. I start to cook. From the homely catacomb in the living room my mother can see the stars. Need anything? I ask her after dinner. Do you mind, she says, you're blocking the most beautiful aperture.

Rachel O'Neill

Rachel O'Neill is a writer, filmmaker and artist. She graduated from Elam School of Fine Arts, The University of Auckland (2005) and gained an MA from the International Institute of Modern Letters, Victoria University of Wellington (2008). Her writing has appeared in a range of literary and art publications and was selected for Best New Zealand Poems 2011 and 2013. She has exhibited in New Zealand, Australia and in the EU, and she is a member of art collective All the Cunning Stunts. Her debut poetry collection One Human in Height was published by Hue & Cry Press (2013). Rachel lives in Wellington, Aotearoa New Zealand.