Sunday poem, by Talia Marshall

2026-03-21 - 16:04

The fact is I prefer Anne Sexton I was meant to be teaching Sylvia’s ‘Daddy’ to students so young they are still a mystery, but instead I was arrested. The last time I was arrested I was staying at my mother’s, in Hamilton. It is hard to live with your mother at forty and to have Hamilton in a poem. Perhaps I should have had more shame and just healed myself by visiting their world-famous public gardens. I could have sat in Hamilton and pretended I was in Italy or Egypt. I could have been composed as a sphinx, but I was another kind of animal. Handcuffs make you feel like an animal. Yes, I am including you in this. Right at the bone my wrists hurt and I needed something more than arnica: I needed my father. I stared at the light on the cell wall and said: Paul. I would never call my father ‘Daddy’. I will never call anyone ‘Daddy’. But one day I will visit the Hamilton Gardens and ask God why paradise is so bleak. The facts are I deserved it. The fact is I bit her ankle like it was a drumstick. The fact is we are all animals. Handcuffs are not optional. The fact is I was being wrestled to the ground. The fact is I was frightened. The fact is I don’t care for poems about feeling turned on by fascists or your father. But three days after I was arrested I thought about sex for the first time in weeks. The fact is I am not much of a Plath fan. I don’t like her method or her madness. The fact is it is hard to have your children in a poem. It is easier to tape them out. Easier to turn on the poisonous gas. It is easier to ride a horse and be coy about Shakespeare. It is easier to imagine the spirit floating above the body better than a balloon. But I don’t have this. I have never left my body. I don’t want to rise with Lazarus and ride side-saddle into the burning moon. I have never left my body. But now I don’t mind if I do. I had shaved my legs for the first time in six months. Finally, a useful intuition, because she made me strip and wear a green padded suit that made me look like a Ninja Turtle. In my suit I tried to frighten all the police by telling them I was a writer... They all snorted, so I turned to one and said I see death in your future. What lies! I know nothing about the future, although in 2007 I knew someone’s name before they told me. But I did not see this coming. Even when my heru broke in my hair and spiders started crawling from my son’s head I could not see it was coming. I knew something was coming. Something is always coming. I realised I had made a mistake. I thought Stevie Nicks would help me; I thought the grand white witch would bless my manuscript. But ‘Rhiannon’ is a Māori song. The women take you anyway and why. Taken with kind permission from the constantly fascinating Substack ‘I hold you to me by a thread’ by Dunedin author and savant Talia Marshall.