The Finding Persephone Poetry Competition

                        Mā Ngā wai hono i te pō 

                    Ko te Moana Nui a Kiwa tērā

                e tauhere ana i a tātou ki motu kē

              he wai whakatere, he wai whakapapa

                   he wai hono - pēnei i tō ingoa

                                 ko ō roimata 

         he tohu o te aroha o te tamahine ki tōna pāpā

                  he wai mokemoke e maringi nei, 

              e mōhio ai tātou ahakoa he ariki koe, 

                            he tangata hoki koe

                  mā runga i te tai e timu atu nei

   ka rere a Moana, a Tariana, a Iritana, a Tūheitia mā 

                  mā runga i te tai e pari mai nei

                          ka tatū tō waka ki uta 

                          ara mai rā he tētēkura

                           ko ngā au o Waikato

               he puna ora mō ō tūpuna, mō tō iwi

                         pēnei i a koe e rere nei 

                            i ngā au o Ōhanga

           he piko, he taniwha, he piko, he oranga e

              ko ngā tai o anamata e papaki mai nei

 kei te ihu o te waka, ko koe, ko tō iwi Māori hei tuarā mōu

                      Ko tō au, ko te au o Waikato

                     Ko tō arikitanga, he wai ariki

               Ko tō mana, manawa whenua ake nei.

never was clear on the difference              between cervix and cervical 

turns out          cervix is what he jams his fingers against and cervical

is for the needle                             staked in my meringue-warm skull  

i dream you come to me as lace curtain         holy tongue          embers 

humming occipital                         he flips a coin you know                                                    

some women are born on the butcher’s block                    serrated and 

raw                           what you do in the heat is yours alone                                          

back home the salt flats are smoking                        come season’s end

ripe with buccal fat          thorn-fed ongaonga leaf           i chew ginger             

                                                                              drip cerebral fluid 

                                                                    through

                                                            my  

                                              aching 

                                                                life                                        

my daughter’s butter ringlets                                   singing in the pan 

am i so greedy               for wanting to tuck her somewhere temperate

eggs in my cupboard are turning joan       black-spotted        shell-sick

when you said god built you for this                   how were you so sure                

marrow grows teeth       bone spurs           simmering in the cathedral 

of an unset table             do not join me without a mouthful                                           

he wants me good cripple                         patron saint of coal-fed girls    

i want             i want              i want             out of this burning house

You never shiver. The sand crisps under the 

pram’s wheels and the wind has bared its 

teeth but I couldn't know that you’re cold 

except that I am. We crawled home 

from hospital through winter’s ligature, 

pitch of night, keen rain. And, in the months 

since, I have spent my body on yours. It must

be spring now. The shore is neither truncated 

by full tide nor yawning itself back out. Knowing 

our luck for life in general and weather in particular, 

I have prepared: stuffed in the basket 

under the pram are blanket and cardigan and 

socks and hat though getting you to keep a hat on 

is a battle I'm weary of losing. The wind bites, 

but the crouch to pick up your woollens is an 

arduous journey. I take off my jacket 

and tuck it around you. I’m sorry 

we haven’t come to the beach. It's a short walk, 

but while holding you inside, my muscles forgot 

how to hold me and they are only just learning. 

I have been tired. There is a hill. 

But we are here and the wind is cold around 

us and my jacket is warm around you. Fluorescent 

yellow sails dot the grey, and I turn you 

and click the brakes so you watch the ocean, 

the way you always watch the world: eyes wide, 

brow clear, arms forever stretching forward

Our thighs are fractal

like the lines made by shells 

as the tide goes out

and mum, the skin around your eyes 

matches the sand dunes.

Carved by the wind and sun 

into crevices for me to crawl in.

My freckles are yours 

and you got them from the rocks in the river. 

Our lumps and ridges are the hills of Papatūānuku 

that my legs carry me over.

I once told you you had 

heels like a pumice stone. 

I meant it as an insult 

but now I have callouses that hold 

every place I’ve walked

and I don’t think that’s ugly anymore.

My body is the one you grew

and I’m learning to love it how I love 

the earth and you. 

Mum,

when you look in the mirror 

I hope you see a kauri tree

like the ones in Puketī,

like the one you see when you look at me. 

Yesterday I drove into the sea with Sharon

in the passenger seat and her fox terriers

in the back. We were in my blue Mercedes.

She yelled, We’re not bloody Thelma and Louise!

She screamed, Help me get the dogs out!

She pushed me, Get out or you’ll drown!

She said, once we were standing on the sand,

What the hell is wrong with you?

I told her the day job was making me

question my own sanity because customers

came in and abused the staff. I told her

I’d learnt to grey rock them but my fleshy

heart was turning to stone.

I asked her if I looked old, tired, irrelevant

and she said, Well, if you put it like that

perhaps you need a holiday.

I apologised about the dogs, I could see

they were shivering and she said her husband

was on his way with towels. 

She was one of the few people I knew

who hadn’t got divorced.

She asked me what I was going to do

about the 1980 Honda Civic.

You mean the Mercedes?

And she laughed and said, I think

You have too many houses in Aquarius.

I told her that was all shite, that 

I didn’t believe in anything anymore.

Maybe it’s the war in Iran

or the price of oil that’s getting to you?

I had to disagree, It’s the price of Whittaker’s.

The thing is, and we both know it, that 

no matter what’s going on out there 

it’s getting easier not to care.

Life’s all about our pets and not our kids.

It’s the videos and programmes

about making an orange polenta cake

or the knowledge that Eleanor of Aquitaine

may not have invented courtly love

that litters our conversations

because all the rest is too hard,

too military, 

too man-made.

I told Sharon as we walked

to the car that I used to be 

soft on the inside and firm

on the outside and this is why I had

attracted lovers, but now I was 

Rocky terrain on the inside/ 

Blancmange on the outside, 

Unworthy of the male gaze. 

There’s a hell 

of a lot of freedom in that, she said

and I knew then that we were

fine, we just needed a hot

drink and a sandwich

while we waited

for the kindling to light

and give us 2160 years

of matriarchal heat.

The Western girls eat picnics on TV, kneeling on the red, checked cloth 

in white pinafores, feeding amorphous teddies from tiny pink teacups.

I ask Ammi for ham- appropriately American but forbidden in our household 

since 2002, when they made the vow at the temple for her safe pregnancy- but

she tells me I can’t “eat it raw”, and to take it outside quickly. My ham, now 

a few un-American discs, crisped edges from the coconut oil, my old Graduation Barbie

and I, under the bougainvilleas. On Seeya’s palm frond “praying mat”, peeling off 

small chunks of the meat, tapping them against Barbie’s PVC lips,

I make a secret prayer to the dying sun. Creativity wouldn’t stretch the lengths 

of the amla- scented locks on the girls at school, wouldn’t peel the skin from me.

Sweet. Too round. Mangoosteen girl. Dark all over, from the 5 AM chlorine. Never

measuring up to Graduation Barbie, her new lip gloss, flecked with pink, fried ham,

and her endless resourcefulness in the face of the economy’s plummeting health; or 

to the boys, who never fear the blade and scissors, the naked ache about the shoulders.

Futile, the bowl-cut. I’d get the lice anyway. Crush the eggs in between my nails-Ammi 

comes walking, barefoot, across the uncut grass with a handkerchief drenched in

4711. We left Barbie out in the rain that day, smiling anyway under the bougainvilleas,

and the crows took home the ham, to feed their ugly babies. 

Sweet-meaning friends say they don't understand the application of she. He says I'm giving boy. She says I'm giving they. To me, she is inextricable. Because I am a good boywife, I cook breakfast for you. I make your coffee and forget the sugar, stack the dishwasher and send it for a spin. After all, I am so dutiful. Mired in my own possessions, yarn spools from my every surface. You say you haven't always liked being a girl as we cuddle under Nana's kitschy-to-the-max quilt. When I wake, you are there in the space between me and my windowsill, where a person-shaped lump of clean laundry used to lie. You touch the impression of bedsheets on my cheek. I try to wrap myself around the fact that you will be gone before the southern-hemisphere winter begins. The following week, I phone you while you wait for your ferry south. You watch a man washing dishes through your binoculars. We laugh at the wrongness of it. I call you a voyeur, a peeping tom. I can taste the apart-ness that will be ours come May. You strum your guitar and sing: I've got something to tell you, something so important to tell you…

You should take me out back to the barley field 

and fuck me until I can’t forget there was a softer time

                          back when the days were fire quick,

                          it was soda chased by lime.

angels would loiter ‘bout in the back garden

                         to catch pockets of that windchime laugh

                         and the sunshine falling from the palm 

                                                   where it pressed flush into hers.

             shake their heads a little, amused, when we picked up cigarette stubs

                         pretending there was something classy

                         to the dusty scraped knees

                                       and red apple cheeks.

she looked a better, easier version of me

                                                                and felt it too

as we swung ourselves to the edge of what a hometown could be:

bramble and creek, thickets of wet sand

                                                               and of hot    crackling concrete,

tic tac toe smeared onto faded pavement

with oil poured off the cheap Wednesday pizza deal.

                         girlhood scraped itself through 

                         week by week just like this

We clumped together against the swelling of age

                         as it swept up; grabbing at our thighs, nipping

                         at elbows, and sparkling in that thin divide

                                                                 separating your mouth   from mine 

the ease to love what I had begun to hate about her

                                                  as long as it lived in some other body.

what was that weird gulf between summer and autumn for, if not:

melting off whatever troublesome persona

                                                              I’d bit my way into this time, or

beating back the sky as it bore on down

through heat and atmosphere, cradling the body too close

                         cotton scratching at the collar bone,

                                       and hands too, clammy and now calloused.

sweat soaked straight through fabric while she braved the river bank,

                         sprinted and slid and slung her body up into cloud

                         and brutally back down                again and again into gentle water

I gripped the moment hard, wildly aware of how much 

                                                                           I’d become last spring.

stuck now in some shirt, or else in the tall barley grass,

only one or two toes dipping into the current as it stripped its way past

                                                                                                   free and so fucking cool

considering what it might be like to not have something built in  

                                                                                             that clings to the skin.