Isla Huia

1.    wetlands

in this city, it costs more to live

by the airport than by the sea

so we get stoned in the car at the

end of the runway, waiting for the

emirates A380, laughing as the richest

boys in town chant

my dad is your dad’s boss

when they score a try.

what i’m saying is, try harder -

there’s a swamp beneath us all, a cathedral

in the abdomen, and rūaumoko

tucking his hospital corners

into our decade of dreaming.

what i remember of the shaking is

claire’s brother swimming in

the burst drainpipe, and even now

the burnouts, the babes cruising

colombo, soy milk in the tussock

at taylors, and driving down

linwood ave in my bra.

mine are the bodies

high and dry, in the backseat,

orange sundown coming in hot -

mine are the kicks on the dash,

in the flotsam, the kaiapoi preachers,

perfume like sausage and fire, i run

until there’s a meadow to scream in:

i did not run out of grace

grace ran out of me.

mine are the sunny-siders, out on leave

hurling up ‘n go and looking for the stars

buried on brighton dunes, where the plastic

sky turns out to be a memorial

for something dead.

mine is the metropolis, named for the worshipped

and the place to worship him

just in case we forget, spend too long in rāpaki

and start using big words like rangatiratanga

or tamatea pōkai whenua,

who called the heat to come home.

mine is the city muted, bin inn on stanmore,

buying poppy seeds for the tea we take

lukewarm in pump bottles up the bridle path

realising halfway that we’d be terrible settlers

because you can’t colonise that which

you’re too high to climb.

mine is the city that smells like shit when

the wind hits, unswimmable piss-ponds

in the nervous system, so rank we all

wanna drive so fast we just lift off,

wanna lay down in a field, until the

continents rise up to meet us where we’re at

which is home-adjacent

which is bone deep

like a hustle of hips

foaming at the mouth

saying

swim, swim,

north,

to the light.

14.    native

drink water from the stream and / see the way the sun screams driving / over the mountain
 if you’re fifteen / breaststroke in the emerald pool / isn’t game enough unless you’re naked
 if you’re twenty-five / the wet lycra is / a thirteenth layer of skin / for the twelve io / to live in

 it’s the morning / i want to be reminded that i’m brittle / and womanly / that shafts of dawn
 on the crags / don’t need to hit me yet / let alone punch me in the head / i am needy for nothing i’ve got an axe / i’ve done an interrogation / and discovered that the kids are / still sleeping

 i trust in the orange triangles / and the stars / some ancient wisdom / would you rather:
 never tell the time again / or hand over your phone right now / see / the pasta is in a transparent body bag / like nothing needs to be / a secret anymore

 like leaving the pills in the packet / and using it as something percussive / the urge for a pulse is real / and to syncopate with these mountains! that would be so māori / so before god / so beating in time with the river rush / my sister is so sad / because the trees have gone black
 i remind her of moss / that they are indigenous / not dead

 in this hut / we are musterers / and we have put the flock back out / to pasture in this hut / the
 sun creeps higher / than the valley / and i take my free hand / out of the sleeping bag / the amniotic sac / in this hut / the whip wind smacks / like feathers / i am saying / i am here

i am saying / suspend me up where the light is / i am saying scree might not win the pageant / but i’ve got a soft spot for this planet / i’ve got no bones left / to pick.

29. mahurangi

to get to the peninsula we have to

load our possessions into black

rubbish bags, body bags

and haul them up above our

heads, wading knee-deep in blue.

the inflatable is called the white

lady and so i sit on her like dead

weight and refuse to fly,

yet i am salted under the northern

skies, flush with the insects, and

soon i will be talking to myself

again

carving my name in red clay

on a coast the tide will eat

and i don’t mind that temporary

fame, or the blood that

doesn’t bond my small body

to these people. after all,

i am the only child of

this green, i am the only star

of this pūrākau, i am

in love with

that sun.

under the

pōhutukawa with

conjunctivitis, i still

choose to look at the

light, it sells itself to me so cheap.

aunty corners me under

the kitchen table with eye-

drops, and i moan

i don’t want a doctor

in this life yet, i just want

you to

adopt me.

i can navigate

the mangroves to the

supermarket, the

sandbar

to buy the oil.

i am named for

an island and

i choose that over

and over, over

ICU every time,

i choose it like a burnt

disc skips a heart

beat

i want to eat nut-

loaf on the grass

forever, like a fever that

forgets to break.

keep me up there on

the greenest hill, hands

up for some

reception, only to call

home and say i’m

sorry but

i wanna be cheered

on with teatowels

i wanna trust that

uncle’s gonna come up

from the dive, i

wanna mount that

saddle island, dig

my heels in, say

let’s go home;

and ride away into

the orange like a static

tv,

so electric.

like turning the power back on.

30. that māori cultural thing of literally knowing this:

i. according to early european ethnographers

who are dead,

rarohenga is a basin filled with so much light,

that nobody who ever went there ever turned

it down.

no one ever even tried

to come back.

ii. my oriori is an earthful of mothers coming

to save me and then not going home.

sometimes i watch the mountains and

it’s so big, the surge, the truth of them

that i gag.

iii. my dream is that i’m on an island and

the water is rising, my dream is that i

have cancer in my womb, is that i’m at

church in the kfc carpark

iv. i have a village and i don’t know how

to utilise them. i want you syphon the light

from the stars, and stroke me like i am a dog

v. this morning i am helicopter parenting

eighteen pre-teens and i want to save them

all except the problem with living is that

the anaesthetic wears off

vi. in the staff room they want us to

invest in teaching deeper learning, by which

they mean that on the office wall, there is

a whakapapa

of white, male principals, who are looking

down on me and up my skirt all at once.

vii. mornings are a continual blessing

because when they happen, america is

going to sleep

viii. there is a woman who sees white plastic

chairs around my skin. she sees my tīpuna.

says she knows i see both the underbelly

and the heavens

says she too was put in a hospital

because the whites of her eyes

were big enough to see what used to be here,

and who still is

ix. all i shoot straight from the hip

is hipbone. an iwi in its own right.

all the world is a river. tequila sunrise,

psoriasis, and peace

x. thank god for māui.

he hooked me up

(with) a home.