Essa Ranapiri
standing on a cold black sand beach somewhere in the future breaking my own heart
I wonder if it was obvious to you that
when I said your curls were beautiful
& that you remind me of a young Keri Hulme
that I was flirting
that I was tipping something over in my mind
and calculating that nine times out of ten
I would break
down into grains of sand on a beach I’ve never been to
(or only been to once and have no memory of
because I was stuck inside
my paakehaa upbringing)
and one time out of ten
what?
when you send me a message
sometime later
on Instagram
saying you can see why I made the comparison
(after looking up the picture of Keri on the beach
in her jandals next to that bucket full of kaimoana)
a part of me
hopes
(hopes for what?)
the tongue inside the kina shell
moves against its walls
and I feel a little ill with it
a thought spirals out
to us
and I laugh at how fast I
sew a future into my pain
a patch I put on every four days you
pick up from the table clearly interested in
what it is I am becoming
or maybe I’m just fancying
that is what you are thinking
because I’m fancying
you say you should read The Bone People
so I give you my copy
complete with a page torn from a notebook
I used to bookmark the last hundred pages
(on it handwritten instructions
from a friend
that once saved my life)
and I say that Keri’s work is everything
that I wish she had all of us
curly haired takataa in the 80s
to show her she wasn’t an eighth of all she was
she was all of it
her voice now moving through all of our words
like a longline with a jawbone attached
slicing through the ocean
and an even bigger fish
and I can see us (you and I) on a beach
in one of her stories
a tower
burning down behind us
and me asking questions too big to answer
the rocks cold
the tide dark
and stretching back
into the rest
of itself
Oh the Love and the Pain
after Keri Hulme’s ‘Aue te aroha me te mamae’
the sun is sleepwalking through a quiet day e kare
the warm sea massages clay back onto the cliffs e kare
it looks like the world is building itself up to something
the waves e kare hang the kelp around their necks
crabs empty their shells of food before finding
a place they call home
a gull unbreaks its neck in the churn of the currents
comes back alive squawking
e kare
the sea and the land passing lives between themselves like little gifts
in the turbulence
e kare
Silence part 2
for Rowley Habib after Keri Hulme’s ‘Silence’
Where are your bones?
My bones are inside the house,
leaning against the cabinet
– it’s empty.
Where are your bones?
My bones are off on a forty-day trip
to the desert in hope
that it rains.
Where are your bones?
My bones in the engine of one million motor vehicles
all pumping their best chemicals into the atmosphere.
Where are your bones?
If you take a right turn after the McDonalds
they’ll be in the trough with the meat patties
I swear the pigs won’t touch them at all.
Where are your bones?
My bones are drowning inside my bones.
Where are your bones?
Being used by swimming teams
to break into the changing rooms.
Where are your bones?
The clatter the hit of my bones rings
around the stadium, my bones breaking
other bones
my bones breaking windows, my bones
stealing televisions and radios and all manner of extension cords.
Where are your bones?
None of them long enough to connect back. To my real bones.
Where are your bones?
Those bones that karakia those bones that can stand tall on the marae
them bones that never dry out that always know what’s up when it’s up.
Where are your bones?
My bones are eating my other bones and those other bones just want to go home.
Essa Ranapiri (Ngaati Raukawa, Te Arawa, Ngaati Puukeko, Clan Gunn) is a person who lives on Ngaati Wairere whenua. Author of ransack and ECHIDNA. PhD student looking at how poetry by taangata takataapui engages with atuatanga. Co-editor of Kupu Toi Takataapui | Takataapui Literary Journal with Michelle Rahurahu (obvs). They have a great love for language, LAND BACK and hot chips. Thanks as always goes to their ancestors, who are everything. They will write until they're dead.