Āria by Jessica Hinerangi. AUP (2023). RRP: $35.00. Pb, 86pp. ISBN: 9781991154149. Reviewed by Māia Te Whetū Luminous and dripping in indigenous wisdom, this debut collection of poetry written by Jessica Hinerangi arrives with an extended hand, promising to hold close as her words move us through many waters. ‘Put your head under’ (p.59), she…
Starting the morning at St Kilda Green brown scumon the chevron sandthreading the edgeof the waves I hope it’s decomposing kelpand not the wastewater housedown the coastI swim anywayand never google itwhen I get home My friend tells me about surfingoff the left end of Smailsand getting an ear infection Pipes sputter into the harbourslick…
like flowers: like the soft wet mouth of a bloom: like a noxious weedweeping onion spit into your hand: like an overgrown puffball screaming outits last, sad, spore-filled breath: like a cat clamping down on blue-greentail feathers: a stoat feasting on the delicate orange of a native egg: yolk spilling outall over its fur: congealing: like a fly bloated with…
Physically whimpering, shaking-it-off then turning away to cover your eyes. A bear-dog stillrag-dolls a scrappy puppy-bitch in its dribbling jaws. Reacting late, I cried ‘don’t look,’ shepherding you down a roughly-cobbled lane, in a re-sampled version of a Chinese town to a bar where someone played Muse’s live version ofNina’s Simone’s ‘Feeling Good’. Although not…
It’s an up-risingIt’s a down-fallingIt’s layers and layers and layers Of soilOf concreteOf pain and lossOf searching and wonderingOf saying ‘this is our tūrangawaewae’Of blank stares, of disbelief, of eye rolls,‘ka pai, that’s what you say’ It’s not so much what I sayIt’s what isIt’s what we’ve knownIt’s what we knowIt’s the revelations that keep…
Journaling is an act of autoerotic eviscerationSpilling my guts for my own pleasureAnd stamping around in the juices like a toddler in a puddleMy promethean navel barely heals by the morningIt weeps serous fluid and soaks my sheetsMeaning I always wake up to a damp shirt and pants The first time I slept with my…
Two children sit listening to the rain.His fingers drum upon his seatbelt, she keepsChecking social media, despite getting zero bars.Grown now, they are no longer beholdenTo adults idling at the pub, or the menaceOf the one-armed bandit stealing their dinner. The rain continues downward, a thick pelt.Maneuvering out of the Skyline, they findThemselves surrounded by…
On that first morning we found something left for us on the cabin’s steps; a small pink glove of a thing, curling on itself in the morning sun. Some private part or organ, not meant for seeing—ex, one might say, formerly, out of, or disembodied. For the next three days the burning Foehn ripped through…
but there’s a lot of detail I don’t havethough I guess I could ask them but they don’tknow that I know what I know that they thinkI don’t yet know but that’s why they’re parentsand not children but on the other handthey have parents, too, though all four are deadbut that’s not my fault, I’m…
I met a man tonightwho was tryingto diebut didn’trealise the seriousnessof his position— supine, the mountainof his middlecountry rising smoothand round,lava seethingunderneath would leave himboxed and coldbut then, when openedup, they stuffedthat magma backwithin its cone and triumphant,as his woundswere stitchedI told him he wouldget homeand still had time so he shook his heada little…