Marama Dina
By Rima Martens
22 October, 2019
train rides out become a train ride home
i stepped inside the tall ceilings and found not
an exhibition house but a breathing body
here she rests the rowing woman
this meeting house is her womb
my lover and i take off our shoes
found now, a place that can contain
(a resistance)
found now, friends who know what to keep simple
(and what to complicate)
smiling mouths flossing a fishbone clean
her body curves as our ears open
//
in this house, on the woven rugs, i hear this woman has ridden so far she carries the rush of ocean hushes with her
how she draws in the waves to the rhythm of her thinking
and pushes them out when it is time to pray
and so i stretch my mouth
wider
and let the kava wash in
//
today, we are neither the healer or the warrior
we are the watchers of the children of iTaukei
for each other we are skilled, pulling out lies like rotten teeth
there are no straight lines
our thoughts oscillate into colour leaking out our midday thanks
i tell my girl this is all there is
this is the movement, the loudest of the islander DNA
so ring in the desperate and call up the strong
press your ears to the threadfolds and hear how the seashells howl
of brown women who have seen too many tornados
(asking questions of the summer and calling in favours of the cold)
keepers of Martin Luther’s dream
there is no pattern to see only one to feel
talking on on owning kingdoms, riding dragons out of a tarpaulin kitchen
soil crumbling from between barred teeth
they know the light is the truth of where they came from
cos histories are forgotten but myths stick to skin
(the waka did not push themselves)
headphones on i hear that every moment
reading Wordsworth in high school was a
waste.
kids should learn words of the land they live
what if they were not quiet places
weepy black dots kneel to the practices of veiqia and a sail made out of a child’s feet
talanoa soft like dangling long boards
patterning to understand
the brightness of the weniquia on donita’s skin
the joy after ceremony
of KAILA that connects her to the bang of drums beating
the kids playing is curing the wrinkled with dementia
what it is to remember
that art is the activist’s flaming torch
out the meeting house her cries birth plenty willing hands
placenta blood trailing
decolonisation,
babies’ first steps are reclaiming language
the woman’s limbs prove that decolonisation is not integration
assimilation forced them to spread that way
these are the what if’s of a world fossil fuel free
but the children have grown out
into the garden
and the sunshine father witnessed
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