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Lake Kainui 

Your skirt smells like strawberries   
and your fingers are milk    
slipping down my cheek   
above us pohutukawa    
pirouette and wink   
I want to bite them   
see if I can taste red   
if it’s different from the watercolour   
we paint on our hips   
you recite villanelles to jawbones   
eyelashes and thin ankles   
I lie back and you make    
a kete with my hair  

- Dadon Rowell

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