for Shell
the moana washes up

what she doesn’t take

her detritus crackling gifts

glimmering on the shore

the sea in its own set of armour

the sea that puddles around on sand

like open mouths gargling

some kind of thought

that slowly assembles in the depths

and there it lives a very gay life

until the beach calls

and it knows that ia will come 
O! Angaanga
O! Angaanga
the beach calls

or

is it some dumb gay poet

calling their friend on the phone?
O! Angaanga
rising from the waves

covered in molluscs

with a cap made of coral

you wear backwards

serving some ancestral fuckboi realness

covered in kelp that falls

like a kaakahu from your shoulders

spiders crawl from the places

that you hid them

to travel safe

under the moana
we watch as their legs skitter

with the glisten of the sand in the sun
O! Angaanga
those red streaked babes

find their homes

finally

in the driftwood

where they multiply

go look at my house

they say to each other

doesn’t it just

make you hot

to think about

such security? 
sitting in a bath with

two locked doors

between you and the world 
O! Angaanga
the seagulls

play a tune

that goes a little bit like

‘Mama’

and a little bit like

‘But It’s Better If You Do’

cracking creatures

against whatever hardness they can find here

whatever certainty 
we dance there

arms waving at the sun

bodies reaching for something

close to stability

as the gulls continue

to feed
O! Angaanga
the sea is still draining from your ears

I go to say the way the water falls from

your open mouth reminds me

of that one Doctor Who special

where David Tennant plays up the worst

of his version of the Time Lord

which is umm saving people’s lives

when he’s not meant to

but I don’t actually say that
the episode ends with Captain Adelaide Brooke

killing herself to teach him a lesson

about fixed points in

time

is there anything in your past you wouldn’t change?
while the water flows you cannot speak

so you use your hands instead

and I try my best to understand

try my best to pretend
O! Angaanga
you’re on a towel now

dripping in the passenger’s seat

the sea creatures once alive

now folding off you in clumps

their reliable transportation

turned into a death trap
we’re stuck in South Auckland traffic

the car idles its fumes upwards
O! Angaanga
where do we go now?
in this imaginary scenario

do you still live where you did

in Takaanini

would we sit in your lounge

with kuumara creeping over the carpet

struggling harakeke into different

shapes

passing lines back and forth

about dear dear

Whiro

you would pull out an obsidian blade

and scrape along the leaf

till the muka

becomes something worth weaving

while I make increasingly deranged putiputi

I would leave on the table as a gift

when it’s time for me to go
O! Angaanga
when I write

I never cut

away from the heart
O! Angaanga 
you’re unsure if you belong on land

after so long under the ocean

teaching schools of fish

what the hook means 
this land is yours through whakapapa

any amount of time away

cannot be held against that connection;

a dull knife that makes the cord

sing rather than cutting

through
O! Angaanga
we follow the waters south

to Ootaakaro

tuna hugging the river floor while rakiraki

bob their bodies up and down

bills placed to snap

whatever moving thing would fit 
when we get out

looking for the hotel I’m staying in

we only notice we’re going the wrong way

some five minutes’ walk past

what is the biggest building

in Christchurch
and a black statue of Victoria
she was never here but

she’s never left
O! Angaanga
I feel sick every time

the Tainui rules around

poowhiri are listed

a dress shirt and pants for taane

a dress with a respectable length for waahine

taane sit up front

waahine in the back

all black

thank God

for colonisation

thank God for the sorrow of Queen Vic

and young Albert getting typhoid 
amene 
O! Angaanga
God gave Noah salvation

in Uenuku’s peacocking

spectrum

said all the flooding is over

for now

except not really 
the rainbow in the oil spill

the rainbow in the gay flag

the rainbow in the spinning crystal in the window

the rainbow in the Pink Floyd T-Shirt design

the rainbow in the paaua
O! Angaanga
you’ve grown obsessed

with dried seaweed

going through a packet a day

always offering me some

with a gritty grin

before popping the next sheet in
I always decline

too salty I say

knowing full well it’s not the salt

that gets me but the texture 
you joke that it’s better than

filling your lungs with smoke

a prior addiction

that steadied you through

turbulent currents

in the homes of our kauheke

all those taonga paaua become ashtrays

the eyes of the stars

smothered with cigarette butts 
O! Angaanga
there were twins racing toy boats

on the Kaiapoi river

when you told me you wanted kids

but didn’t want to carry them

like the arachnids formerly

hugged under your skin

which were all like real small

compared to a human baby
I think it was here where

I let go of a future I had held

so foolishly

and left it for all the trout

in the tributary
O! Angaanga
grey clouds hang at the Denny’s car park

like solemn watchers

we’re back in South Auckland now

never did figure out if the Ootautahi Denny’s was real
in this shitty weather we’re slow to move

giving questions to the dashboard

asking whether or not

suicide is a completely

appropriate response

to invasion
maybe the medication will stop me feeling

how I should

maybe the medication

is just muffling our ancestors? 
O! Angaanga
I spent our separation inside of

a hollow heart (mine)

trying to beat it back

to shape

taking a mallet to its clay walls

my head ringing with

the question

can I fold the world into something

I want to live in?
I missed you

I guess is

what I mean. 
O! Angaanga
I swam for the first time in the Waikato

the other day

stripped to just my underwear

in the warm awa

Tamanuiteraa turned into

an orange smear on the clouds 
what part of me is clean here

while the rest rots?
O! Angaanga 
Mary Anning allegedly

the woman who sold

seashells on the seashore

took the oldest and deadest

things and pulled them from the cliffs of

Dorset to tell a whole new story

about the earth’s ancient past

so not shells exactly (poetry always takes

some liberties)

but

fossils

and skulls 
in the final shot of Ammonite

a film that is loosely (loosely) based

on her life

she stands on one side

of her discovery

while her gay lover

stands on the other
offering her a life that some thought impossible 
O! Angaanga
I ask you about Hinemoana

and what it was like to live in her sea

and you just smile slightly

something moving at the edge

of your vision

that I can’t see

and sign something like

well, there is a reason

I’m not there anymore
O! Angaanga
I think I’m getting sick from

my own river

which would make sense

cos the council overseas a sewage system

that has the habit of overflowing

how much human shit into this river in

the last ten years?

let alone all the runoff that comes

from farms exploited by Fonterra 
or is it claiming an awa

my ancestor already turned their back on?

I can’t imagine

doing that

but maybe I do that all the time

look at a mountain and say

I don’t even know you

anymore

without even knowing what I’ve done
but when I swim in the Waikato

my body becomes

something I can love

dissolving into

the paru water 
O! Angaanga
how long can you hold your breath?
according to Facebook

I came out as trans 7 years ago

I sometimes wake up and remember

the boy I was still curled up

inside my stomach

like some dead meat I just can’t digest

that fluttering fear leaving

my house in a dress

my lungs shrivelled to the size of

what-ifs in my mind

but still they knew what to do

when I took my first breath in 23 years
O! Angaanga
I watch as one particularly clingy katipoo

makes its way out from behind your ear

and crawls over your still face

to rest in the centre of your forehead

like it’s finding warmth in some third eye

you have hidden their under the skin

it didn’t want the driftwood beach

the spider had grown attached

so it begins to weave you a veil 
whether or not you should

you trust it not to bite

as it turns its energy into something

that catches the light  
O! Angaanga
I remember in the early months

you bringing up binders

you would wear as a teen

and the others thinking you

were straight

I didn’t even think

you were cis

at the time 
in your tino jacket

scuffed to fuck jeans

making some joke about LAND BACK
I thought then

that I would hope

to get to know you more

than just that taniwha who added me

on Facebook
O! Angaanga
I’m thinking about the bubbles flattening

to the surface of the tube

and our meme of Papa and Rangi

standing underneath a storm

of inside jokes and the knowledge that

if I did myself in

right here

and right now

you would just travel back in time

to make sure I had something else

to hold onto

with an arm outstretched

you would climb into Rarohenga and one-outs

everyone who would try and stop you pulling me back to life

or we could just stay in there together

and grow savage and old

collaged from a million different sources
oh to age as a waa is luxury

as a source of power

lets us grow fucking monstrous

fill the world with a kind of darkness

that chews the heads off men

or rewind to live

inside a single frame:
O! Angaanga
the pohutukawa blows up red

like it’s embarrassed

by all of the sentiment

our waka landed near one

bent into its own weight 
we really go back

way back

to the Sunshine takeaways

me on the Friday

and you on the Saturday
I remember having a phase

where I would strip the batter

from the fish and eat both

separately
O! Angaanga
instead of different days

what if we went on the same one

and from then on

were never separated

even when things got real hard or real bad

you staring into the wall

and me bringing you back to the present

with a hey or a coffee

or a little meme I found

about being bisexual and depressed

oh aren’t we all

or like way too many poems

I read you down the line
O! Angaanga
imagine a world that wasn’t defined by capital

built on invasion and exploitation

I don’t know if I’m even capable of it

but I know

it’s not because of worker alienation that

I like shiny things 
when I was a toddler my nan would get me to help

make mobiles to hang out on the porch

just driftwood with shiny Cats Eyes

(they were always my favourite)

watching from irregular stations on

glossy nylon
the plink they would make

a familiar rattle

like some other neighbourhood kid

was playing with toys

out there in the wind

lip to bottle hoping to get a song out of it
where by the right angle

capitalism could

just be blown away 
O! Angaanga
how dramatic is this shit?!

if I was Byron or Shelley or Hopkins

committing my love to chains

in words

to clothing with many ruffles

saying your name over

and over again

until the calcium crumbles

or the moana passes her horizon

over our brows
O! Angaanga
you grow weary of the land and its politics

and instead of waiting the twenty or so years it will take

you have decided to give Hinemoana

another visit 
we make angels in the sea lettuce

letting the tide move us gently in the foam

the impressions of our arms swinging

ephemeral at each wave

I make a joke about being wed to the ocean 
you say in a voice like skipping stones

it was the beaches you always liked the most
cos on the taatahi there is always the option to run away

there is always a choice and if you change your mind

it just doesn’t mind all that much

the beach is used to things coming and going
O! Angaanga
no matter how much

I think I should be used to this

I’m not 
over the course of the day

I shuffle back up the beach

while you remain below

as the sun dips

you begin to float

the great big sea pulling you back to her
I don’t remember what the last things I say to you are

probably something like

I’m getting cold

my stomach is sore

I don’t know if that means

I’m hungry or full
you just nod and smile

and sign: same

e rua e rua

seaweed still stuck between your teeth

you turn your eyes to the horizon

and slowly but surely

the sea

she takes you back
O! Angaanga

Auee!