Featured Poems
Jasmine
‘Como un ciego, regresé al jazmín
de la gastada primavera humana.’
‘The jasmine in the garden
of humankind's wasted spring.’
- Pablo Neruda
The aureole of the streets shines
a constellation of fumes and dust.
Buildings laced with stalls of jasmine and ivy.
Woody stalks and bursting blooms in stellar hues –
Vanilla-yellow, opal and white,
sweet, heady and impatient.
The city, a grand cemetery.
Air glides past timeless tombs,
a mingling of half-dried flowers, pink and marble.
Stalked by sunset, the light begins to fray,
as I hold up the jasmine to the dusk
and memorialise this day.
Styx
Deep khaki water in the heat of midsummer seethes
drowsy through the black oak, the stifled wind strives to breathe.
The frosted-glass river is thick with algae and jellyfish flow by the
banks,
phantoms laying in the wake.
About Poet
Leila Lois is a woman of Kurdish and Celtic heritage who has lived most of her life in Aotearoa.
In her poems, Leila explores a personal sense of origin that, like the ocean, binds several landscapes and times.
Her other written work can be found in publications such as; Southerly Journal, Djed Press, Right Now Magazine, LiteLitOne, Mayhem Journal, Delving Into Dance, Next In Colour and Salient.