Rare Evolutions I.

The tide recedes, revealing a crossroads

of cherry-shaded life. Among the coralline

algae the cat's eyes and chitons feast

and excrete. Whelks predate. Paperwhite

lilies cover my throat and chest, framing

the surgical scars. A person is a cooled

pool of magma. A lover is a person who

breezes in-and-out of your life like an

aromatic, uncurling flower. An ex-lover

Is a poem or several. Birth is an expulsion

of hot fluid and matter into the world.

Rare Evolutions II.

Somewhere along this graceless frontier, there is a girl who is not.

Routines and subroutines. Turn towards yourself

separately, face— the unending summit.

Gravity keeps you to the conventions of land. Gorse envelops

your face and hands, catching on your clothes and leaving shallow,

red scores. Fear is like a birdcage. Collect the feathers that fall between the

bars and gather them in bright bouquets.

A girl is a feast of contradictions. Doctors and scientists will have their

opinions— it doesn’t  have any bearing on the no-man's land that is her body.

Beaming, birthed into the world again and again— creating ruinous ontologies.

A girl is feral. S[he] is leaving behind the bondage of civilisation

and becoming more and more wolflike. You will find her [him]

in exquisite wilderness, licking clean the bones of a deer.

Elliot Harley McKenzie (they/them) is a transgender pākehā poet whose work has previously been published in Starling, Tarot and Best New Zealand Poems. They are sanguine and their hands are covered in mud.