Bill Manhire
The Little Match Girl
The little match girl has no matches.
Why should she? She is only imagined: a mistake.
Can I convince you to try some of this?
Her home is at the end of the high valley,
up towards the tasty sky. Her house has a chimney
which smokes and aches. All day long her mother knits.
She just sits there looking impressive.
Bill Manhire directs the creative writing programme at Victoria Universityof Wellington. His Collected Poems was published in 2001 while his most recent collection, Lifted, was published in the UK in 2007. He is also co-editor of Some Other Country: New Zealand’s Best Short Stories, which has just appeared in a fourth, expanded edition.