Rachel Fenton

Rachel J Fenton lives in Oamaru in Te Waipounamu, Aotearoa, where she is Curator of Janet Frame House. Winner of the NZSA Laura Solomon Cuba Press Prize 2022, and Finalist in the 2014 Dundee International Book Prize for her novel Some Things the English, she is also an award-winning graphic poet, AKA Rae Joyce, and is co-editing the forthcoming anthology of women’s cartoons Three Words. She tweets as @RaeJFenton.

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Sample

Beerstorming

verb
The practice of upgrading regular brainstorming sessions to include your favorite craft beer. Beerstorming sessions result in improved cooperation, creativity, and morale almost 100 percent of the time.
– https://beerandbrewing.com/beerslanging

New York

New York, cold as discovery
on the Friday morning my mother’s text
informs me my father had a heart
attack – we are estranged;
what is to be done about that?

Not one, two, but three four five

days of visiting libraries
I can leave but never recover
from. Charlotte’s waiting. Truth

                 will    be cradled
spine felt
green            as a cover
against a wall

                 of books, one I’ll return to

in photographs, blurred as froth on beer
pulled too fast from the tap.

New York Public Library

Friday, later: paper, thin,
blue as the New York sky
missing a piece of brown

high rise. I pause opposite
gold doors of Gotham Hall,

buy two tall hot teas,
take off my gloves,
check the temperature,

                weather report.
Minus five.

At the place I thought I wanted,
impatient attendants inform
me: the one you want is over

the road. Guarded by a white lion
expression in stone, staunch
Leo. Inside it’s a palace.

The Berg Collection

A man roars at the end of a red corridor.
Charlotte comes in snatched moments,
words time has made mud in water.
Joshua is good at pretending he hasn’t heard.

Tonight, we will share ideas, beers
bought with a bottle opener from a drug store

on a corner where streets
whose names and numbers
I struggle to remember
meet.

For months, they have prepared, brought gifts.
Tin tin tin. They have been watching Happy Valley.

But first, Joshua repeats instructions
for what to bring to the table, leave
in the cloakroom where women
do not speak regardless of how much I smile.

It’s cold where they work beside the revolving
door, hard to push

as it is. All Saturday I pour, luckily
miss the manuscript
I am allowed to touch
with hands that did this:

Martha died. “There is nothing to regret”
I confide in Joshua, the coat check guy is jolly
grumpy. He laughs

librarianly. An engineer is told
humidity is threatening the safety of the collection.

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