Chris Parsons is a poet from Aotearoa New Zealand. Chris's work appears online and in print in Aotearoa, Australia, the United States and the United Kingdom in journals such as First Literary Review East, Fuego, Honest Ulsterman, Landfall, Orbis Literary Journal, Takahē Magazine, the Oxonian Review and Turbine Kapohau. Recent work appears in the New Zealand Listener and is upcoming in A Time of Singing, Mayhem Literary Journal and Shot Glass Journal.

Chris Parsons

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The Map of Threat

Living with dangerous words
has made us comfortable
with the vernacular of danger.

Our roommates: lahar, tsunami,
moraine, continental plate, avalanche -
all jittering their shopping lists

with a seismograph's spidery hand,
or tracing cursives on pristine white
with a frantic ice axe.

Our near horizons over the fence
compiling their jagged pages,
their records of fitful sleep.