Bottom

after Todd Verow

My virtuous life has been

apportioned by the speculum

my original sin came

to me in the form of planting

my stake in the ground. My ground

was a ground to be staked. Surveyed.

Making a spectacle of

my body, I’ve speculated

and been surveilled and turned to

tree: rooted. I’ve departed from

my beginnings. I am now

ordinary. I’ve grown ‘yet in

to another skin, and so

again the révolutionnaire

succumbs to naked power.’

They are talking about me.

I am the revolution

ary and I am becoming.

Josiah Morgan (Kāi Tahu, Ngāti Maniapoto) is a 22-year-old artist and an Ōtautahi local. He is the author of four books with a fifth forthcoming, and can be regularly seen on stages across the country. He believes in magic.