Featured Poem 8/19/07
She Imagines Sex Is Like New ZealandShe imagines that sex is like New Zealand.
She’s never been to New Zealand
never felt her feet on that soil
never breathed sea breezes in a southern hemisphere
never seen black sand beaches
or more sheep than people.But she’s dreamed of that place
for as long and languid as her memory stretches—
running through strange green forests
(and no poisonous snakes)She’s wondered over such rugged isolation,
that infant land, still primeval.
She’s longed for a visit or a visa.She feels it’s foreign but familiar.
A photograph of a friend
that refuses to come into focus.Though in her dreams the colors and sounds—
green-blue leaves, wool-salt air—
are far removed and
she can never seem to grasp the reality
of the
beauty, the chilled, dank danger,
volcanoes, colonization, kiwi fruit,
all the hype opposing the "truth."One day she’ll save her pennies
and go to New Zealand.It will be
horribly
disappointing
and as sublime as her mind made it out to be
all along.
—Emily Mills
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