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GOING BIG PLACES
Every six months
I text a new address
To my confused parents,
Who cannot comprehend
This constant shapeshifting
To fit alien spaces
Crowded with residual ghosts
Past and future;
Rooted as they are,
Like ancient banyan trees.
This poem is about the sense of instability we felt as tenants. We never fully unpacked and there was always this feeling of being in transit. Though it wasn’t every six months, we did have to move quite often. I found this very unsettling and longed for a place of my own.
From More Than a Roof
I am a refugee.
I am an expat.
I am a migrant.
I am a resident.
I have no ‘birth certificate’.
I am illegal.
I have no home.
I am an alien…
Call me names.
I am never home
I was never home
when it’s always home.
For here, I am from there
and there is everywhere.
For there, it is here.
I am an alien
Call me names.
You called me all names.
Why not human?
Call me human.
From More of Us
The messy work of eating corn
sometimes gets done
out on the front porch
in the sun
A few bright golden grains
fall through the deck
down to the earthy dark
for passing ants to sense and check
and make a fuss:
‘Behold! Now see!
There is a God
and He loves us’
I have always enjoyed reading poems; they are a reliable pleasure. Some favourite poets of mine are A. D. Hope, Geoff Cochrane, Emily Dickinson and Philip Larkin. In my spare time, I like playing around with words and trying to make sense of life experience with them.
From Potluck
Humour is handy
and so is courage.
They will keep you sane.
If you haven’t packed them
for this visit, don’t worry
it’s okay to steal and scavenge
in hospital.
You’ll find traces everywhere
other patients’ visitors
birds serenading outside your window
the bright tie adorning the shirt
of the friendly pharmacist.
From My Wide White Bed
Culture significance all in one dish
Salt, from the Himalayas,
my mother’s favourite area
Beef from a local farm
where my father worked when he was young
Vegetables, my aunt’s own harvest
Mixed with a spoon, left behind by my sister
Baked in a tin my grandfather used as a child
Taken out with gloves from my brother,
a kind present years ago
Sauce glazed over, Grammie’s love all in one recipe
Served on a plate, chipped from love in
World War II
I wrote this poem to honour heritage and the people who have shaped my life. Each ingredient holds a memory, a story, a piece of my family history. I think it’s essential to remember where things came from and the people who have been there along the way.
From Potluck
sitting in peranakan mansion
clutching expensive peranakan shirt
descending from peranakan ancestor
am i peranakan enough yet
maybe i’ll buy another shirt
The histories of my Peranakan Chinese ancestors are complicated. Migrating from Southern China to the Malay Peninsular centuries ago, they married into families of Malay descent, collaborated with the British under colonial rule and became subject to perennial systemic discrimination under the 1957 Malaysian Constitution. Regardless of whether I bought that extra shirt, I have come to understand this complex ancestry is my birthright. The question now is: How will I wear it?
From Now and then
when i plant kūmara I feel
something strong and deep
as i furrow the rich mounded
earth with my forefinger
and settle the tender
sensitive shoots to bed
row upon row i tuck
them in puku down
lay them to sleep
beneath a blanket
of earth, a sense of
another time over-
comes me, when the
kuia planted the shoots
ngā tipu, it was known their fingers
were wise and gentle
I live in Paekākāriki. I work in many art forms, but I am primarily a poet. I wrote ‘e tipu’ to express the sensations I experienced planting kūmara in my garden. I was awarded the 2024 Prime Minister’s Award for Achievement in Poetry.
From Potluck
the bananas arrive
on ships cut loose
from ports in the
Philippine and
Ecuador sea
picked green
high on fertiliser
so not to freckle
in a dark container
sap settles
it’s a long way for
skin to travel
bound for a lunchbox
with no windows
From More of Us
Travelling light
She is walking at the edge of the sea
on the wet shining sand.
The bright sky is behind her.
She is travelling
on a sheet of grey light.
We pass, and I wave.
She laughs. Of course.
A woman who walks at the edge,
on light, would laugh.
From Roll & Break
My grandfather’s dreams built this place.
Now it’s being destroyed by those
who want their neighbours dead.
River to the sea
would kill my four-year-old cousin.
Bombing Gaza
kills someone else’s four-year-old cousin.
And leaves me wondering if the people I share blood with
care about blood.
Don’t say this fighting is justified because it’s over a
country,
because what’s the use of a country
if its only inhabitants are corpses?
And don’t say this fighting is justified
by a historical or spiritual claim to land.
There is nothing more holy than a life,
and there is nothing more lasting than a death.
Healthy rivers run through fertile soil
in the land which could have been our sanctuary.
Bombs are dropped, guns are shot now nobody is safe.
Don’t pick between my cousin and someone else’s.
Don’t misinterpret my grandfather’s dreams.
My name, Maytal, means dewdrop in Hebrew. My parents are from Israel, and all my extended family lives in Israel. None of them live in the occupied territories. When the name Israel comes up, a lot of violent images flash through my head. Those violent images coexist with the memory of me and my four year-old cousin, Arbel, picking grapefruit in my grandmother’s backyard.
From Now and then
Suspended – three
Of them
Working
A city high rise
As if dangling
From the side
Of a poem.
Each day
For a week
I stop and
Watch. Waiting
For my coffee.
They are
The only thing
Not reflecting
The sky.
They are clouds
Made of
Bone and man.
From Somewhere a cleaner
All those years ago in a new country
I set off to town to buy some coffee.
They said there was good coffee at Stewarts
downtown in the Octagon.
Coffee meant home, coffee meant comfort.
But you had to go down the stairs.
I didn’t like stairs, I didn’t like the cellar.
I’d escaped from stairs that went into dark cellars.
‘I want some coffee bones,’ I said.
‘You mean coffee beans,’ the man said.
I went home and ground the bones
in our new coffee grinder.
Beans and other magic words came later.
From More of Us
Surveyors, their pegs, and acres of greed.
A pavlova paradise now seas of bland.
And yet they’re making no more land.
Our own home in its green paradise.
The berm, the driveways, unsustainable sprawl.
Social isolation, and traffic at a crawl.
Time to change our idea of what works
Suburban? Affordable? That promise is hollow.
Closer, up, smaller – a direction to follow.
Beauty, colour, privacy and joy.
We don’t need that quarter acre to have it all.
Have no fear of sharing the wall.
Our precious land, no more to be made.
Be smart, clever and wise with our schemes
Turn nightmare costs into affordable dreams.
From More than a roof
Above my eyes
My father’s brow
Bushy and hard hair
One straight line
Left to right
Ichi in Kanji
Telling he is honest and staunch
I was born with his brow
Like Frida Kahlo
But I hate it.
Now trimmed and shaped
I’ve lost my father’s brow
But
His honesty and staunchness live in me
I am a Japanese language non-fiction writer, living in Aotearoa New Zealand for over two decades. I love writing, flowers, stars, history, travelling and learning about different cultures. My favourite proverb is ‘Where there is a will, there is a way.’
Ichi means ‘one’ in Japanese. We use Kanji (Chinese characters) in
Japan. Ichi is written as ‘一’ in Kanji.
From Now and then
Every six months
I text a new address
To my confused parents,
Who cannot comprehend
This constant shapeshifting
To fit alien spaces
Crowded with residual ghosts
Past and future;
Rooted as they are,
Like ancient banyan trees.
This poem is about the sense of instability we felt as tenants. We never fully unpacked and there was always this feeling of being in transit. Though it wasn’t every six months, we did have to move quite often. I found this very unsettling and longed for a place of my own.
From More Than a Roof
I am a refugee.
I am an expat.
I am a migrant.
I am a resident.
I have no ‘birth certificate’.
I am illegal.
I have no home.
I am an alien…
Call me names.
I am never home
I was never home
when it’s always home.
For here, I am from there
and there is everywhere.
For there, it is here.
I am an alien
Call me names.
You called me all names.
Why not human?
Call me human.
From More of Us
Wash our hands
Wash our mouth
Wash our nose
Wash our face
Wash our arms
Wash our head
Wash our feet
Five times a day, all in threes.
Finding our inner self
Preparing to face God.
From Somewhere a cleaner
Humour is handy
and so is courage.
They will keep you sane.
If you haven’t packed them
for this visit, don’t worry
it’s okay to steal and scavenge
in hospital.
You’ll find traces everywhere
other patients’ visitors
birds serenading outside your window
the bright tie adorning the shirt
of the friendly pharmacist.
From My Wide White Bed
’O si a’u uo lelei lava o le solo ma le pulumu,
Ma te gālulue fa’atasi ma taumusumusu.
O se laupapa po’o se fa’ata,
Titilo atu iai po’o manino ai lota ata.
E mana’omia lava a’u i taimi uma,
Mo le fa’amatagōfieina o tua ma luma.
’Ou te teuteuina ma fa’amāmā oe ia lelei,
Ia matagōfie ma susulu mai ai lou aulelei.
’O se fagu fa’amanogi e fa’asasala i lou tino,
Ina ia tōsina mai lātou, ’ae lē o le ‘ino’ino.
Tīgā le mālūlū ma le pogisā,
’Ou te lē fa’avaivai ma fa’alogologo tīgā.
’O a’u o le fa’amamā lāpisi,
’Ou te galue pūnoua’i ma lo’u afu maligi.
Tele o taimi e lagona le lē lavā ma le vaivai,
Nofo i lalo ma mafaufau, si a’u fānau i lē ’a’ai.
’E fa’atauva’a la’u galuega i manatu o isi tagata,
’Ae ua ‘avea ma se fa’amanuiaga i lo’u olaga.
Si taga lapisi lava, pulumu, solo, tā pefu sa ’āmata ai,
Si a’u fanau lēnei ua ola manuia ma atamamai.
’Ou te fa’afetaia le Atua mo meaalofa foa’i mai,
Ua mātou tali sapaia ma fiafia ai.
’O nai o’u lagona nā,
Ia va’atele atu i’inā.
I am afraid of every line I’ve written in the new language.
Each phrase is a life sentence
served in the stanzas of my poems.
I fish for well-meaning words with a net
made of the echoes of native connotations
drowned in history split by the Iron Curtain.
I stitch its shores patiently with the sun’s rays
that cut my world in half every noon and midnight.
I arrange the words tellingly.
I am terrified of a wakeful night
– a crumpled dream of a blank sheet of paper
removed thousands of miles from the day I wrote my first word.
White paper balls float behind the eyelids
while I look for the words
as meaningful as my former self.
From More of Us
she waits
for her children
to fall asleep
before she opens
their schoolbags
and studies their homework.
they learn
so much faster
and she’s falling behind.
they speak her language
with an accent now
and she can’t
understand what they say
when they speak
among themselves
in their new
mother tongue.
From All of Us
We greet with
deep pleasure
and confidence,
eyes greeting all the body,
shaking the hand with a hug.
In the morning
we greet older people
‘Endmen aderu’.
In the afternoon
we greet them
‘Endmen walu’.
In the evening
we greet them
‘Endemen ameshu’,
shaking the hand with a hug.
In the morning
we greet the man of middle age
‘Endmen aderk’,
in the afternoon
‘Endmen walke’,
in the evening
‘Endmen ameshehe’,
shaking the hand with a hug.
We greet a young woman
‘Endmen adersh’,
in the afternoon
‘Endmen walesh’,
in the evening
‘Endmen amesheh’,
shaking the hand with a hug.
There is deep pleasure
in greeting, in all
our cultural and religious ways.
Our greetings are our secret.
They tell our stories,
they connect us to each other
and share the love.
Greeting gives deep pleasure.
From More of Us
the bananas arrive
on ships cut loose
from ports in the
Philippine and
Ecuador sea
picked green
high on fertiliser
so not to freckle
in a dark container
sap settles
it’s a long way for
skin to travel
bound for a lunchbox
with no windows
From More of Us
Travelling light
She is walking at the edge of the sea
on the wet shining sand.
The bright sky is behind her.
She is travelling
on a sheet of grey light.
We pass, and I wave.
She laughs. Of course.
A woman who walks at the edge,
on light, would laugh.
From Roll & Break
I feel nervous, scared,
happy and strong.
I hear the whistle
and we are all running
to get the ball.
We are running like hedgehogs
to score a goal.
It starts to rain,
the wind bashes you back
if you try to run forward.
It is raining so hard
our clothes are all wet.
The grass is muddy and slippery.
I can see people falling.
It is cold, but it gives me a very good feeling.
It makes me forget everything hurting,
it makes me forget all the sad moments.
It makes me live here in this moment.
From More of Us
Suspended – three
Of them
Working
A city high rise
As if dangling
From the side
Of a poem.
Each day
For a week
I stop and
Watch. Waiting
For my coffee.
They are
The only thing
Not reflecting
The sky.
They are clouds
Made of
Bone and man.
From Somewhere a cleaner
All those years ago in a new country
I set off to town to buy some coffee.
They said there was good coffee at Stewarts
downtown in the Octagon.
Coffee meant home, coffee meant comfort.
But you had to go down the stairs.
I didn’t like stairs, I didn’t like the cellar.
I’d escaped from stairs that went into dark cellars.
‘I want some coffee bones,’ I said.
‘You mean coffee beans,’ the man said.
I went home and ground the bones
in our new coffee grinder.
Beans and other magic words came later.
From More of Us
Surveyors, their pegs, and acres of greed.
A pavlova paradise now seas of bland.
And yet they’re making no more land.
Our own home in its green paradise.
The berm, the driveways, unsustainable sprawl.
Social isolation, and traffic at a crawl.
Time to change our idea of what works
Suburban? Affordable? That promise is hollow.
Closer, up, smaller – a direction to follow.
Beauty, colour, privacy and joy.
We don’t need that quarter acre to have it all.
Have no fear of sharing the wall.
Our precious land, no more to be made.
Be smart, clever and wise with our schemes
Turn nightmare costs into affordable dreams.
From More than a roof
You’ve got fat
Wide and noisy
Far too glitzy
By night
You don’t hold me
Nor I you
I’m glad we’ve parted
You remain mostly familiar
Yet no longer my home
From More than a roof