Herekorenga/freedom
I am not free you said/ I want to be free
but what you meant was money. You didn’t mean/
to become airborne and stretch your arms to capacity until
your fingers ache and then spread/ surge
to catch the breath of Tāwhirimātea beneath newly formed feathers/
you didn’t mean free like/
to jump from Papa’s tall cliffs/ and sweep down her sides, sheer
knobbly, vegetation sprouting in unshaven pits/
money you said/ is choice
money the whip that lashes at our bodies with its hungry patu.
but money is not free/ I said
our bodies are free/ if
they are not burning or drowning or hungry or being overun
by virus they are not buckling/ under the weight of us/ choice
is the currency of freedom/ money
is spectacle
like streamers on the bicycles of rich kids/ flying from their handle bars
as they speed past
me, their laughter a tether/ I cannot catch that
without body/ we are free
to tell, declare, resist/ to be called
by the catch cry of Ngā Tamatoa/ by the whenua and its acres/
the song
of mana wahine/ ngā reanga o mua
- money is the freedom of flags/ flags that have been raised
on behalf of/ flags
that have been used to poke holes in the body of this land
as if she were steak/ as if she were free
Pūtaringamotu/an echo of the place Ngahere Dean
e piki ake ahau/to the past
to my kui/she
over not under/
the iambic feet of the church
bricked into squares behind/god
you love the catholic of my necklace, want/
the sky with all his voices
split hard/a-cross
the great steeple, a fence of
rotted stumps, corrugated
in metered pou
call me up, call centuries/bare
birds with muscled thighs
smoke the earth/dank
waterways sepia and stuttered/
bracket you in time, e te māreikura/
he ellipsis tēnei…
e noho ana ahau/at the past
- speak me to the cob house/
the colonial sick of it/cloth
behind glass you look, we see,
pōuri rawa
you shake me frightened
of the cracked air/dry
choking/i ō tātou hau
ka oho ake te ngākau/ki te taumata
crested on winds of the south
you recite me the tail flare/me ko pīwaiwaka
stippled light so big I can read
ngā tohu, the smell/
moss-wet of ponga
like shade, nē kui?
e hongihongia ana/the brine of your whisper
he whakatūpato/climbs me
over not under/
the virgule of the empire -
soul buyer/fencer of tongues
until thick/bodies until
heavy Papa tilled - measure/welcome
her suckle return, sweaty and feral/
he hokinga tēnei, to darkness and mud
where we the huruhuru
are the birds of our kui
still
Taonga
When I was 10 I was obsessed with buried treasure. Not the pirate kind with X marks the spot but the archaeology kind that tells a story of a people. I wanted to bury a time capsule with letters inside it that would say all my loves and hopes and grandiose ideas for the world. I wanted to find the longest lasting case, one that time could not erode, one that could withstand eons of churning below the topsoil. Perhaps plastic was the right choice but at ten I assumed metal – a cylinder, a discharged artillery shell, with a watertight seal to carry me. I determined that it would contain deep truth. It would reveal sadness like no other child had yet been articulate enough to share. It would speak of loss. A grief impossible for a 10 year old person at the beginning of the eighth decade in the century of human acceleration and innovation and greed. I would not stumble over the telling of harshness, in my critique of wretched humanity,
nor in the rendering of a blossom, the skin of its petals silken with my morning breath. I would describe how the tide stretches back its lips, further and further to meet the fullness of the moon, and in summer, how pipi sprout in jagged teeth from that same open mouth. I would bury my time capsule there - in the moving whenua, where barnacles could decorate it, and salt could form on its surfaces like crystals, and where only those who still knew how to dig for words, would find it.
Anahera Gildea
Anahera Gildea (Ngāti Tukorehe) is an essayist, poet, and short story writer. Her work has appeared in multiple journals and anthologies, and her first poetry book was published by Seraph Press in 2016. She is currently undertaking doctoral research focusing on Māori literature at Victoria University.