Bio
Jeremy Roberts is a resident of Napier, Aotearoa-New Zealand, where he lives with his wife and daughter. He MC's at Napier Live Poets, interviews poets on Radio Hawke's Bay, and is poetry editor for the VINES journal. His work has been published widely - including NZ Listener, Landfall, Takahē, JAAM, Poetry NZ, and Phantom Billstickers. Jeremy has performed and recorded poems with musicians in Aotearoa, Austin, Saigon, and Jakarta. His first poetry collection was 'Idiot Dawn' (poems 1981-87). 'Cards on the Table' was published in 2015 and 'The Dark Cracks of Kemang: The Bajaj Boys In Indonesia' was published in 2022, by IP Australia. He was awarded the Earl of Seacliff poetry prize in 2019. https://www.read-nz.org/writer/robertsjeremy
Jeremy Roberts
Smoking
It was a cool moment:
Mike and his brother smoking a blunt
as they sat in their little Honda Civic
outside the stadium –
waiting to play a game of Lacrosse.
I think their team got thrashed,
but that was the point.
You just have to do it,
sometimes,
and I don't mean 'smoking' necessarily.
What I'm talking about is
that old gig of seizing defeat
from the jaws of
victory.