A Recital of Poems 12 – Kyra Gillies, Miriama Gemmell, Rachel and Cristián Goméz, & Sudha Rao

what I mean is love by Kyra Gillies

I asked: is there any connection for you between spirituality & politics?

what I mean is

the only thing I love as much as
the land, sea and sky
is people (is peoples)
is art

what I mean is

sometimes a song feels like a prayer
sometimes a walk feels like a meditation
sometimes a talk with a friend feels like a poem
and ALWAYS dancing is pure joy:
ecstasy crystallised
a smile on legs.

what I mean is

a meal feels like a ritual
a gathering feels like healing, nourishment

simple. humble.

I mean nothing more or less than love.

 

Auntie Matatau by Miriama Gemmell

wanna live at your skirt hems
drive you up town
hear your whakataukī        in my head
use your dialect        idiom
do a bomb harmony of that wai

you sing

auntie – tell me
o       leaves for that ailment
o               bones of that ridgeline
o                     taniwha in the bend
how i hono       to that whānau
o        & that whānau

wanna follow your lead
o      know how to care for my ikura cloths
o        murmur your moteatea by neat repeat
o          build the rewana bug
o  while you put your feet up
with gumboot tea, ngeru & infomercial
o      help you make doughboys & trifle
o      tītī & quince jelly
see your tikanga
o   in its taketake habitat

wanna
o      be
o          useful at your side
o nurture without money
ocollect kawakawa & kai
learn to call by eye & waharoa whispers

auntie matatau – where are you?

o      saw you in that insurance ad
o    heard you in a short story we read at school
o  watched you in that home town film doing so well
you were so good

 

Love In The Time of COVID by Rachel Goméz

Sleep defies my weary lids
Your arms, so far away
My fingertips reach for you
Run along your spine
Through lengths of fibrous cable
An optic illusion, of oceanic proportions
Alphabetic intimacy
The tsunami of emotions
Rising

A Morse code
Of love
Competing for space

We Twitter, as if beaked
Wings clipped
Banded wrists
Who were we to think the earth belonged to us?
Even now, I rely on her briny depths

The world’s a ship without captain, my love
No steadfast course
The modern watch keepers too busy listening
For heartbeats

Jonah’s gaoled in the whale, filled with our plastic offspring
And we live the same day over
Apart
Except for the messages, bottled and corked
Thrown into the sea –
A lifeline
Of love

 

Amor en tiempos de COVID
Translation Cristián Goméz

El sueño desafía mis párpados cansados
Tus brazos, tan lejos
Mis dedos te alcanzan
Corren a lo largo de tu columna
A través de tramos de cable fibroso
Una ilusión óptica, de proporciones oceánicas
Intimidad alfabética
El tsunami de las emociones
Creciente

Un código Morse
De amor
Compitiendo por espacio

Enviamos Tweets, como pájaros
Pero de alas recortadas
Muñecas prisioneras de pulseras conectadas
¿Quiénes éramos para pensar que la tierra nos pertenecía?
Incluso ahora, dependo de sus profundidades saladas

El mundo es un barco sin capitán, mi amor
Sin rumbo firme
Los vigías modernos demasiado ocupados
Escuchando
Latidos del corazón

Jonás encerrado en la ballena
Llena de nuestra descendencia
Plástica
Y vivimos el mismo día otra vez
Aparte
Excepto por los mensajes, embotellados
Taponados
Arrojados al mar –
El único salvavidas
Del amor

 

Coracle at a confluence by Sudha Rao

Prologue The first time I saw a coracle was the last sight of my father sliding off a river bank in a small elegant box.
	Shouldered by his sons’ calm and focused grave faces the boatman pushed off a river bank glistening dark below the coracle.
Water a-swirling green silk saree, unfolded a climbing ancient certain sun over grass losing dew by sun rising.
The monsoon had gone leaving a wake of flora like a ritual path slow and deliberate for my father turned ash.
	My father’s journey was his last with family on a coracle to join his parents at the holy rivers’ confluence.
	The photograph showed a simple box paddled down a silent river leaving my mother behind but not captured by the shot.
	There are no pictures of my mother on the day my father journeyed leaving her banked alone edged by the fright of it all.
Thirteen years ago she was at a confluence standing on her soil harnessing timidity to rise from his ash new born.
Confinement
A tiny beast brought her world to a standstill as an invasion on boundaries she called calling on her loved ones.
Thirteen years later we crossed the air between us on a flat screen to unwind her history on her coracle for me.
	Confined by her space my ninety-year old mother nodding with white hair spoke like a black bird at night waiting to rest at sun up.
From her envious Wellington harbour outlook tides glistened and peaked shadow free from shipping boats but bearing daring sea gulls.
An accidental storyteller displays her open memory pad with magical wonder as the sun dapples her walls.
Mother mother She, of her mother says Eshtu chenage idhlu* Sudha, when she died I was second-time unmoored from my umbilical cord.
	Composed again now she becomes that precious stone in a black and white picture framed by her white hair transformed into a young girl.
Here she is singing long plaits pale face hesitant eyes looking into her deprivation, her void “Oh Mother! I bow to thee”.
Her song celebrates a gathering of warm smiles draped in sarees an ocean of recipes an invocation to life.
	Here she is married a punctuation altered by a new goodbye bucketing expectations when a red mantle turns blue.
	She watches herself opening a locked door for unfamiliar voices to surround and bind her path to mothering and loving.
When she breathes Bound for New Zealand a cyclone hit the east coast before she left home the wind whistled adventure and the forest was damaged.
Her tales are many with commas falling as leaves for the wet soils torn bark growing children losing tongue while she breathed out her joy.
	Our genealogy she recites back urgently wrapped in silk thread the flat screen vibrates felling words yet freedom comes skipping.
	Her lifetime weaving carried by ether, carries her song to bury deep and play with memories dropping unearthed gold stars.
Epilogue How was I to know this was a curtain raiser on my mother – she was plaiting for me a coracle for our births.
	At the confluence she took me into a time where time stopped for her and I blinded and muted connected to her big smile.
She made me see youth before unexpected loss sowed a deep sense of longing for her mother who dared the river crossing.
	How this drives her ferocious love for her four how she feeds talk with a banquet of spices celebrated vanished.
When she speaks of us we become her extensions but she is computing our paths away from struggles she cannot bear to grasp.
	This is my mother emerging from a screen talking laughing eyes appear on screen as if for the first time she breathes.
	My mother floats above the currents of her long life I turn into a parallel conversation she, herself I inherit.
I am two women one-time child one-time awed by a small beast unravelling yet binding us, spinning silver thread.

 

*In my mother tongue, Kannada, literal translation is “How beautiful she was, Sudha”

 

 

Kyra Gillies is a poet of Pākehā (Irish) and Romani descent, born on the lands of the Whadjuk people and living on the lands of Kāi Tahu in Ōtepoti. She writes poetry for the people. Kyra loves birds & bannoffee pie. You can find more of her poetry at Oscen & Awa Wahine and in her forthcoming Fringe Festival show ‘Fierce Love & Fresh Air’. She is excited for the Love shortage to end.

He uri tēnei nō Ngāti Pāhauwera, Ngāti Rakaipaaka, Ngāti Kahungunu. Miriama’s poetry has been published in Te Whē, Landfall, Wasafiri Magazine, Sweet Mammalian and other places. She washes yoghurt pots and feels closer to her tīpuna. Miriama lives in Te-Whanganui-a-Tara with her hoa rangatira, Richard, and two tamariki, James Rewi (6) and Hana Tirohia (4).

Chilean born Cristián Goméz is an international expert in telecommunications policy, currently working from Aotearoa. Cristián is also a doctoral researcher of Political Science and International Relations, focusing on human rights issues in cyber space. Nevertheless, Cristián found time to translate his partner’s poetry into his native Spanish, for this collaboration of love.

Rachel Goméz is a freelance writer and poet, dividing her time between New Zealand and Hong Kong. She holds a Graduate Diploma in Journalism Studies, from Massey University, Wellington and writes on a broad range of subjects. Believing poetry is a unique language, bridging the gap between self-expression and our common bonds, Rachel’s writing often explores current affairs and the fragility and strengths of the human condition. She is currently working on her first anthology of poetry.

Sudha Rao’s poem ‘Coracle at a confluence’ portrays her relationship with her parents, landscapes and emotional-scapes. She explores her South Indian heritage and weaves it into her story about getting know her mother. Sudha grew up in Dunedin after her parents migrated from Karnataka and became connected to the Dunedin dance community through her own training in Classical Indian dance. Sudha has been writing a number of years. Her work appear in several publications and anthologies, including most recently in Ko Aotearoa Tatou. In 2017, Sudha completed her Masters in Creative Writing from the International Institute of Modern Letters, Victoria University, Wellington, and is focused on writing and performing her poems. 

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