Sam Sampson lives in Auckland, New Zealand. His poems and reviews have appeared in Stand, Ariel, The Listener and other journals. The author of Gauguin's Poiesis (1999), he has taught ethnomusicology at the University of Auckland and worked as a freelance musician and writer.

Nave Nave Fenua Delightful land signposted as a confusion of flesh / leaf / flower - while a brook called absolute silence intones a plaintive wailing: so low so soft as not to awaken desire. Somewhere Mr. Bernstein? Somewhere (half-decent) there is a place for us an open plan, of peace and quiet, and space for us; an anchorage of blue plague           realism: to spare, to learn, to care for us; but what of time           to spare, time to learn, time to care a new way of living?                               Oh, cut to the chorus: somehow, someday, somewhere, somewhere.... A Blue Lighter with Chinese Characters Your body tossed as flotsam is empty but for characters:                    lucky - star - high - shine each a celestial halfwit wrestled between good fortune and a tidal bulge. where the green.          green seaweed spools tangle;           where I found you. blue. discarded. Gentian Violet A fleshy soul gingerly, in step - tiptoe through a field where peacock blue by-the-wind - on top of the hard sand is deposited everywhere. Ocean polyps strung-out. Keep the head down - grid-locked cells underfoot, bare-reflex - flash! a sudden touch of gentian violet administered liberally to the sting of salt, of tears flinch at the words: 'it's for the best' then the heave of sob distanced, up-running - mouthing, that graze of flesh, the first encounter: mountainous blue / blue mountainous. The Dirty Monk After the pixels were fixed we all shouted Seurat! To be reading Stein Isaiah / Jeremiah / Isaiah / Jeremiah with the blue guitar. I had in mind to pose in profile. Ascetic an(d)          irty and angular.                    inverted in the old sound-hole of a singing star.