essa may ranapiri
visiting Wehi Wehi marae on google maps
the small building made small
by the screen dust stuck in fingerprint sweat
i see you on the screen arms and legs stretched to shelter
but the head head head screens
i can’t move where i stand a digitised yellow speck with
delusion i can see the grass phase in out
existence try my best to get past the fence it barely
reaches my knees easier than anything to step over
can’t get off the tarmac sticky with determination
cars half-copied smudge across clipped from movement stained in time
as i stain
i think of my my body smashed over the countryside
from car half-smudged across my clipped blooded blood
paused infinite before impact there is something inside me that feels
something when
i look at this building the red is a blood
red my blood your blood and the white
is the light stretched the light distance the light between
but still the screen the screen still us
Our Earth’s Circuitry
just gather and hold the body fold
over flesh wet patterns eels throwing up a
phone hits the ground over over
over!! until th sim card turns fragmented
contact list of soil u never talk 2
leave me on read i lie down in th field
look how the gifs curl in the breeze
this touch is birthed out of silicon statues
what atua waits inside digital oblivion fr her
lost bytes all my language climbing out of
an online dictionary where kupu reside
01101011 01110101 01110000 01110101
sick spiral fractal living inside a million fern
fronds dripping math we self similar of land
of our buffering threads pūrakau w/ cgi
can smell a machine programming th wild
as i sing 2 it dead in my throat
as we sink into the whenua held inside their chests
echidna & narcissus
for jayy dodd
“” run through the forest
in tane’s forest none of the trees cat call they all
come silently for new life in the leaves
them all alone as they run through the dusk
everyone has an understanding here the panopticon
is made of kindness the way eyes move across
skin and weigh each pigment in a scale
but a ghost to be left screaming in the sun
narcissus is chasing a dark reflection through the trees
in the depths they hold hands as they skip in
tane’s forest can feel a million daughters rushing with them
“” in an apartment building
do i look like a question mark / to u they ask sitting with a clock
between their legs / echidna thinks what a thing to be
the punctuation that throws / everything into wonder
“” and the water
they’re staring at the surface eyes looking past themselves
echidna is reaching out to make a ripple
narcissus: i didn’t think you were gonna be that bold
to rip the rivers face
echidna responds with: it is only my face disturbed
narcissus just laughs trying to figure out who they are in the current
this is what i call transitioning can you see it
echidna can
i think u love the river so because all ur ancestors souls move through it
narcissus makes themself into a straight line
i can see their black bodies fly through the darkness of the rip
i can see them without shame
without the tattered roles of gender in their moving
echidna feels tears well up
the river making its way out of her face
in here i can be whoever the fuck i am
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
essa may ranapiri (Ngāti Raukawa) is a poet from Kirikiriroa / they have a book called ransack out now from VUP.