Edition 01

Following the sheer volume of submissions we received for our first-ever lit mag, we thought we really needed more spaces for people to get published. With Overcom and Bad Apple coming to an end, we decided a new initiative was in order. We welcome you to 'First Thursday Poems', where every first Thursday we publish poems right here from poets mainly based in New Zealand, though occasionally adventuring worldwide. The first edition features three poems, each selected by a different editor. The editors for this edition are:

Ash Raymond James is the founder of Yellow Lamp and Woofenberry Writers Club, with numerous publications to his credit worldwide. He also co-hosts the Poetry Snaps Podcast with Sarah Krieg. When he isn't creating, you can find him in a bookstore, speed running bankruptcy.

Sazzok (Sarah Krieg, she/her) is a queer, Swiss-pākeha poet living in Tāmaki Makaurau. Her work explores sex, love, and queerness in the context of our late-stage capitalist hellscape. When she isn’t being a crack up on stage, you can find her hosting Poetry Snaps Podcast or walking her sausage dog, Louis.

Ted Greensmith-West is a lawyer and poet based in Tāmaki Makaurau, Auckland. Ted’s work has been published in The Spinoff, Poetry Aotearoa Yearbooks 2023 and 2025, and Cordite Review. He is the editor of bloodbath journal.

Nightlife By Pet Shop Boys

by Chris Tse

selected by Ash Raymond James

Time writes the song

in which the club is a landscape

I worship. O rapturous, drug-pricked

melody—release me from my cage

& speed me closer to heaven.

Save me from the truth

of abandoned dreams &

white nights stuck on repeat.

Grant me the epiphany

I seek from this dance floor

where my radical temperament

can be absolved. Euphoria

is an untamed noise—a lavender riot

storming at the edges

in unbreakable shapes.

Existential desire breeds escape—

happiness locked & loaded, fantasy

traced in arpeggios, rising until

waveforms pull terra under.

Deep down I know I can’t stay

forever because the night

is an even crueller master

than the alarms of the morning after.

Desperation is its own comedown.

The State Of Highway 1

by Connor McNabb

A jawbone on the road

next to three fading stars.

Summer’s hare.

Look out the window. See?

Out there in the paddock.

See our children roasting under the Sun.

Long legs passing across our clouded land

lights the way to white picket crosses

from December til March.

The season of meaty roads

and mint sauce.

Chris Tse is the author of three poetry collections published by Auckland University Press, and co-editor of Out Here: An Anthology of Takatāpui and LGBTQIA+ Writers from Aotearoa. He was New Zealand’s Poet Laureate from 2022-25.

Connor McNabb (Kāi Tahu) is a writer born and based in Ōtautahi. He is studying towards a Master of Writing at The University of Canterbury, and in 2022 was a recipient of the Macmillan Brown Prize for Writers. His poetry has been published in Bloodbath Journal.

With Audacity

by Ruby Esther

There are three boys playing a game of soccer with the same audacity they will grow up and use to shoulder clip women on Clapham High Street.

I long

to live with audacity.

Audaciously

Deliciously audible.

I long to live audaciously

and I fantasise about him.

His giant member

not so big that he can’t

walk side by side with his heterosexual brothers.

But still too big for women.

A ball (soccer) lands on me (vagina)

for the third time

it soars across a picnic

for the second time

‘one more time and I’ll pop that ball!’

She is a Bitch!

The ball lands near a young and hot dad.

He tosses it back like a netballer

He laughs with no one

He is so cool.

Clip my shoulder.

I smell your Creed.

Clip my shoulder.

Ruby Esther is a comedian and poet from New Zealand, now based in London (he thinks it's sick as hell she can now say 'based in London’). She’s the 2016 Word Up Winner, a 2018 National Spoken Word Competition finalist, and a face you might’ve seen on 7 Days, The Project, or Comedians Giving Lectures. Her work moves between comedy and poetry, and you will never make her pick a lane.

Thank you so much for reading. We look forward to seeing you back here on the first Thursday of February.