Poetry
My adopted name
this is not a poem this is not a poem this is not a poem this is not a poem this is not a poem this is the wind this is the wind that scatters lines this may or may not mean something to an exclusive group who can read lines who can read lines? who stops to look at the flowers? who knows the Māori name? who knows the scientific name? who knows their name? who gave me my name? what is legal isn’t always right this isn’t a poem this is about a flower I didn’t know this is about growing up this is about growing into a name this is about growing into a country this is not about growing a country this is personal hello i’m tauhinu for example hello tauhinu do you read the wind? do you read the wind?
First Published "The Friday Poem" The Spinoff (April 2022)
A poem with words is not to be trusted
Every word is defined by other words
Take house for instance
And deconstruct it stick by stone
Or build it from H and S and O —
The sound of howls, and hours
Spent learning strict grammarian rules
—This structure in our cerebral soup
To hold onto like an olfactory memory of
Damp cotton and pink bats in the walls
My house is not your house
Though my windows and doors are open
I try to come in
One word at a time
We might move through rooms
With skeleton keys jangling on closet doors
I try to keep you warm
But I don’t seek warmth; I seek meaning
I taught you language
I learned words
Take house for instance
by Gail and Rata Ingram
First appeared at DWF 2018
Faithful to you, Tarahaka o Kaimatau
Though the clouds fled from your armpits
in spectacular foggy spirals, he gave me red dust
compacted and thrust above the curved earth. Below
I saw the Early Ones warm their hands over fire
offering up babies wrapped in skin and blood;
I saw dingos and camels and dust. When I returned
you showed me the folds of your cloak, tan-gold
hebe-green, slain with purple gashes. I fell among
the prickly matagouri that smelt of pink and tea
and woke in communion with a white gentian.
I stayed with you and named your parts: turpentine,
tussock, scree, kea, karearea, odonata zealandica
who, despite me still, flit incandescent and
irretrievable over the braids of the Deception.
First published Cordite Poetry Review 44
A love story
The walking stick, a fine specimen
looked exactly like a brown stick
of grass on a stalk of brown grass
from there into the car and onto my knee.
I didn’t mean to take him anywhere
near or as far as Kaikoura, but
lucky for the walking stick, we had stopped
at the road end next to a kowhai tree
and a picnic table steeped in long grass
I flicked him out the door,
saw he landed right way up
next to another walking stick
two walking sticks on a grass stalk
like sticks of grass, and I hoped he’d found
the right one.
Equine Connection
swing up slow
drop in
your saddle feel
the leather ripple
in your palm connect
to the mouth the quiet
flickering mind see
the soft
switching ears listening
to your cluck and pressure
of heel and feel
the jolt then sway
of motion the connect
of bone the swish
of air
tickle your face
you laugh
the wind breath
of the horse
Commended 2014 NZPS International Poetry Competition.
First published in Take Back Our Sky NZPS Anthology 2014