Tuesday Poem: Fey Exchange, by Harvey Molloy - and news of a joint reading in Dunedin!

My Tuesday Poem this week is "Fey Exchange", by Harvey Molloy, from his wonderful collection Udon by the Remarkables - check the poem out below.

But wait, there's more: Harvey and I will be doing a joint reading in Dunedin on Sunday 9 October, from noon-1.30pm at the Dunningham Room, 4th Floor, Dunedin Public Library. I'll have more details next week, including the poster for the event, but for now you can join the Facebook event here:

https://www.facebook.com/events/1848403445380889/

Even if you can't make it, please share this event with your Dunedin and Otago friends!

Fey Exchange

A cornflower comb in her hair

and a beetle-wing nose stud

permitted by the deputy principal

for cultural reasons. 

We are not to eat her cakes

or listen to her singing.

Peer mentors warn the entrant bullies

not to be deceived by her stature

and to accept  full responsibility

for any provoked translations.

We are not to teach history

or animal husbandry.

Paper cranes build their nests

on the light above the whiteboard.

Her greatest delight is mathematics.

Her most perplexing question:

How can we live in just three-sided space?

All term we repeat the approved answer:

We know no different.

Until the Monday we find her gone

back to where the world’s light and shape are different,

where nouns are crowned

with capital letters, and consonants

wear diacritical vowels

like a dandy wears a tricorne hat,

and at the festival of braids

the homecomers in the harbour towers

light paper lanterns

the dusty grey velvet of moth wings,

and place them on the bay’s slow water

for the faces of those they remember

back in the steel canyons of fast time,

where the rectors embroider shadows

cast by unspeakable home truths,

and there’s a series of unfortunate errors

in the academy’s final examination.

Credit note: "Fey Exchange" was published in Udon by the Remarkables (Mākaro Press, 2015) and is reproduced here by kind permission of the publisher and the author.

Tim says: I think Udon by the Remarkables is a wonderful collection, and I am looking forward very much to reading with Harvey in Dunedin. I like the sly way this poem makes good on the pun in the title, while maintaining its mystery.