by Gail Zing

acrostic after a line by Judy Chicago

The lines of time copied over and over turned
sight on its side, skin slid off the tray
of her old age body hung in dead animal folds,
my world spun, my
mother’s tipped in a different way to the open
nakedness of youth, her wide surprise
jarred by the mirror’s stranger again and again, was that
me, a stupefied bystander, mouth firmly closed?
I listened to her stories of a crueller era again and
was confronted by my role, how it had turned, again
astonished at what I was already becoming,
at this cool eye of objectification
my strength, my weakness, my
own foolish longing to put to death, her
distress

Gail Zing is an award-winning writer from Aotearoa New Zealand and author of three collections of poetry, including Some Bird, selected for New Zealand Listener best poetry books 2024. She is widely published in places such as Poetry Aotearoa, Cordite Poetry Review, Blue Nib, Landfall and others. When she’s not dreaming up poems in the hills, she’s editing them at the kitchen table, or teaching them at Write On School for Young Writers.