Gordon, Chloe

New Zealand, (b. 1984)

Fresh Orange Juice

  1. She thinks of you as she watches the man outside
  2. the Kingsland church whose clothes
  3. are as white as a Turkish scarf.
  4. This morning there is mist, thick
  5. over the city and to the Bombays, probably to
  6. Turkey and you and the blue umbrellas
  7. on the terraces and the geraniums like
  8. flying kisses and fresh orange
  9. juice for you — only ever fresh
  10. orange juice because you never did
  11. like the taste of coffee.
  12. There is Turkish coffee on this menu.
  13. But her eyes pass it by
  14. for something Italian and a
  15. muffin, and when the waiter brings her drink
  16. she stirs it and the teaspoon burns
  17. her tongue.
  18. Across the road in Kingsland the man all
  19. dressed in white — except for red
  20. flecks that stand out like geraniums on his
  21. coverall — pulls an empty pig from a van full
  22. of trotters, slings it over his shoulder and walks
  23. with it into the meat shop.

Editor’s Note:

Of her poem Fresh Orange Juice she [Chloe] writes: “I don’t know that there’s much I can say apart from that I wrote it when I was fifteen and still living in Auckland.”

 Chloe Gordon. Best New Zealand Poems 2001, Iain Sharpe, editor. Wellington, NZ: International Institute of Modern Letters (2002).

About the Poet:

Chloe Gordon, New Zealand, (b. 1984) is a poet and actress. She studied creative writing at Victoria University in 2001 after graduating from Epsom Girls’ Grammar, Auckland.

Gordon is also an accomplished actor, known for work on New Zealand television:
Neighbours (1985), Mercy Peak (2001), Shortland Street (2001), Bed of Roses (2008), Our Town (2013) and The Breaking Point (2014). [DES-01/18]

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