Te Pō
Stacey Teague
there’s a kind of animal who carries the earth
she hides it in her cloak of feathers
they both are silent, eyes sealed shut
in the realm of sleep without sleeping
a light comes from nowhere
to shadow the jawbone
long black hair gathers neatly at her neck
the pencil-drawn night
fills in the spaces
it is a moonless sky
the clouds will not break
*
when I was eight years old
I knew a girl called Te Pō
she was very tall with long black hair
that sprawled around her shoulders
there was a rumour that she had got her period
many years before the rest of us girls would
I didn’t like her, for a reason I can’t recall
but I thought she was beautiful
I watched her in the kapa haka group
swinging her poi
I was so jealous
one morning when we got to school
we were told that she had passed away
she was helping her cousins down from a tree
lost her footing, head cracked on the concrete
everyone cried that day
I didn’t
*
Te Pō reaches out for herself
in the darkness and finds
an embrace, she thinks
her body is my body
as if from behind closed eyelids
they map one another like constellations
each knowing the other to be true
their hair grows together
like a black satin evening gown
while the sun conceals itself
somewhere way out beyond the horizon
Ipu Whenua
we bury the placenta
in its vessel
pressed deep inside the dirt
not only of the land but as the land
*
the woman grows things
inside her / outside her
they float to the surface
creating islands
*
before the birth we etched out spirals
into wood like skin
made shells for eyes
binding the person to place
*
before they came to tame us
she lay on her back
letting her legs fall either side
hips open on the flax tīenga
*
she becomes like all things
that are lost / things
that bleed when
you cut them up
*
he wāhine he oneone
i ngaro ai te tāngata