untitled by aniqa rahman

https://youtu.be/40Vci8uKE8g

2 HOURS OF BLUES

http://8tracks.com/theadditional666/blues-for-a-while

9 HOURS OF BLUES https://open.spotify.com/user/thekingkrlx/playlist/6GvmOukpFKA0LqfQtgqJzW

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Aotearoa. The Land of the Long White

Cloud. Soon I'll leave here, but New

Zealand will never leave me. I got a

tattoo on my arms. When I flex, the

kiwi bird flaps its wings. When I'm

feeling sad it whispers "sweet as!" The

ink is blue so when I look at it, I'll

remember all of the blue things I saw in

New Zealand: that one brand of pasta, the standard milk cartons, pants. I surf bored

big ol blue and down under there's a fish or some of the fish are blue at least so,

calm down on beach beach sand footprints fry doughnut constellations. If you look

real small, everything is mostly empty space. If you look real big, everything is

mostly empty space. Planet doughnut or hole? "You big blue!" Yes! That's me.

One of my veins is here the other is here. Salty though! Yes! John Key a flag

around my tog torso whispers: you're gonna be. Melts my business core of course,

"Oh! Key!" me marble blue now but for how long?? One day dry, but still blue

then? Or salty things stop working the cells I mean when they're dry they need

more than a few half-full blue bugs and handful ink. Last weekend I flew to

Wellington to see Peter Jackson's house. It was green I know not what you

expected wasn't what I expected either but I guess he is rich. Did you know he

keeps the New Zealand Film Commission running? I heard under his beard he has

a tattoo that whispers sweet as when he's feeling sad. When he surfs and loses his

balance and ends up there in constellations, big blue gets a little drier when Peter

Jackson just empties space. After seeing his house I went downtown and bought a

burger with beets in it. The beets were red I'm sorry not everything is blue. But still

sad said sweet as as it was sweet indeed burger as big as the kiwi tattoo on my

arms almost as big as the kiwi tattoo on my arms when I flex. So Jackson blows by

in one of those convertible bugs bearded silhouette on light blue billboard: 'Best

Middle Earth tour. Hold 10,000 dollars worth of costumes and props. Sweat salt in

Gimli's helmet on the scalp blue sinks - island by island!' And what do you know

again at the gallery Jackson is there dripping like he just fell off a surf board

holding a museum guide in his right hand, Gimli's axe in his left. I tried to focus on

a map of the coast, marked off which regions had been sold to international

corporations, and back again in Dunedin with a single blue hair growing from the

back of my head where Gimli's helmet sunk. I'm writing this now in lecture me and

a hundred other students in this room rain outside 6 people with blue on, one of

them me, my jacket. The lecture is called "Working with Maori communities" I

haven't done the readings for weeks. The lecturer says, 'this isn't really a lecture.

Blue

Zealand by Seth Hanson

let's have a discussion'. 100 people check

their phones and stop wondering whether it

was worth walking all the way here in the

rain on Jesus's free jandles. There's a small

bruise on the apple in my pocket - the food

I'll eat today after lecture - it reminds me of

my first day: the bus driver impersonated

Oprah. The Kiwi I sat next to named Duncan

flexed and told me Peter Jackson is a tattoo

under his beard that whispers 'sweet as' when

he's feeling sad. I guess I don't know whether

he meant when Peter Jackson was sad or

when he was sad. I brought one blue

backpack of clothes but none of them fit me

anymore. I've grown so much since I've been

here, I feel like a whole new person! For

example, I didn't use to have a tattoo of a kiwi on my arms that flapped its wings

when I flexed I used to have a full head of brown hair but now some of it has gone

blue, especially down the back. Did I tell my walks down the river to the New

World and quicker back with litres were melting those pacific islands back down? I

go through the gardens. 'New Zealand has some of the dirtiest rivers in the world'

Suzanne Duncan, my lecturer, just told me. Did you see that on one of the

billboards or were you distracting all those bungee jumpers tourists stretched out

all out to get a look down at wet blue doughnut hole and back up to where they

came from 'I've grown so much since I've been here!' They don't jump you into the

dirt dry do they more like under a surf board scared but real, high and rich and

sprung back to where you came from what did you come for? That's what Peter

asked me when he picked me up from the bus stop and helped me carry my blue

backpack - each of us a strap. And I couldn't answer him! Only a drip of drool in

morning street light, round and glazed and blue. But Peter knew what I meant and

he gave me his New World FlyBuys card so I could save a few cents here and there

on groceries and he could get the points for his account. Yes I was hungry blue

doughnut in me empty empty hole and just too dry so 2Litres L&P poured into the

river vein here and here not so salty any more sweet like even the apple bruised in

my pocket and the tupperware of peanut butter in my bag and the knife there too

blood and ink blue all from the kiwi on my arms that flaps its wings when I flex

and says 'sweet as' when I'm feeling sad.

journal from the American Midwest winter by serena hocharoen