Tia Ranginui - featured portfolio
Tia Ranginui
Featured Portfolio, April 2021
A quiet future - response by Arihia Latham for PhotoForum
A quiet future
We stand, looking at the earth
Piles of decaying stink
Steam rising
Our tīpuna flickering
Their pūkana eyes in
The sunlight slanting
Across us as we dig
I push my hand inside the hot mound
And I am surprised at the life
That hits me again as the small body on my chest wriggles
We settle the ipu
Into the hole
I am not sure I am ready to leave this
Part of us here
But I can see the look on all your faces
And so we start to push and crumble the
Whenua ki te whenua
I have pushed and crumbled
And need to be rebuilt from clay
I need the mauri to be blown into my nose
I need the ora to flood my veins
I need the part of me buried to
Disintegrate or burn
To find something of me rising again
To find something of myself again
To see my face for who it was
But the earth is under my nails
And in my eyes and smeared on my cheeks
And my babies are in it and of it and
Were in me and of me
They are sitting waiting for the me to row us to the shore of
Something new and I don’t know how to tell them
That the tide is out and it might not come back in
That I don’t know the tikanga of these things
Or when time will turn back to shine a light on their soft cheeks
It might be moonlight and shiver moths into their hair
Beating pūrakau into their ears
That only come with te pō.
We stomp down the whenua around a small rākau and we karakia
And the words are whispered in the trees and rise from the soil
The sun is starting to set
The colour of blood
Still reminding me birth was only days ago
Yet something in me is craving the water
The pure of being washed and tapu lifted
It's not up to us to decide that though is it
It’s not up to us to make up the timeline of things we don’t fully understand
I can only watch you all immerse yourselves in the bodies of water that I crave
And nurse the baby till my eyes are
Making rain fall
It falls till our house has a moat
Like I am a princess that has magic
Mauri in my eyes that made me do it
I made this happen with my desire and resentment
I made the tide rise to our boat
And now I have to figure out where we are going.
I am thinking of border crossings
How language is translated
Into sounds that are too foreign for some tongues making them flaccid
The meaning that is lost as the
Grit gathers into small pyramids at the edges of the path
Our mouths, parched as the air sucks itself
Back inside trees
I am thinking of all the sounds
That fall out of us in the hazardous journey of birth and death
That everybody understands these calls
Our lips moisten
With the rain of our eyes
And how our hands turn upward
To wonder at the weight of water and the magnetic pull of gravity
How did I forget about the rocks sinking from my belly to my knees, buckling them in the river of us/ Flooding my throat, gagging me, fizzing nausea at my wanting/ How many strands of the same stars are we reaching for, how many are shaking/ One small silence in the dark fills an entire desert/ Particles of doubt flick into my eyes and they lacrimate with stupidity until your words file in with their heads bowed/ My fingers rub them over and over in my palm till they are oiled with you/
Water tenants my ears
with wave language
muffled boom on
sand crawling over itself shuddering out
the percussion of us
I am drowning
I am surviving
I am
reaching for your
fingers slipping like
kelp curling on the
tide pulling you
from the shore
my feet are surrounded
making a rock of me
determined to fight the
undertow you are oblivious to
Before
Name
Cleanse
Release
Observe
Hope
Offer
Wade
After
Wade in
Deep
Ribbons of sensation
Wash
Back our breath
Keys jangling
At the bony
Door
To our chests
Sky pushing in
On our bodies
Leaving it all open
Leaving it all
Open
Your view of this
Is different to mine
It still tugs your veins
Like a call of the future
Pulling fluid in your
Spine skyward
Rippling waves of thought to
Lap at your shore
Under the same sky
Luminescence exposes
Soft shadows falling
Between us
Is your contraception
Strong enough for
Kohekohe flowering
From barren wood?
Epiphytes hang
Ominous, waiting
Vines strangle silently
Friendly at first
Waiting for a slip up
Are you a good host?
Rimu don’t give a fuck
About the time
Or whether we’ll
Make it home
For dinner
Dusk spoons our tuarā
Whispers stay
Birds, backing vocals
Beg the mites
To rise with
Long shadows
At my back
You fold my washing on my kitchen table
And I should be grateful
But I pick up the basket
And just say maybe you’ll be more comfortable in the lounge
You cut your hair in the dining room and sweep up the strands with the kitchen dustpan
Then you cook us dinner with the tea towel on your shoulder
Humming brown sugar
We go swimming but I sit on the shore
Because my ikura is here
You laugh at how I can’t handle the cold
I nod, I nod, I nod, I shake
There is so much to shake off.
No warmth for the upward tilt of a smile
Until the noise
Of the past and future
Is muted with
Quiet breath
From a kuia whispering to her mokopuna
To find both are in my bones
Marrow rich and sweet
Feeding an upright tilt in my jaw
An arch in my neck
The steam of ventricular
Contraction in my sternum
Raising my eyes
Skyward to the milky wash
Cataracts of the dark
Feigning confetti
The earth shaking
Me forth, a seed
To push on
To unfurl from my caul
To flower like a novice
To copy the stars
Sometimes I feel like your eyes are dark caves
The high tide will come and fill them with the sounds of water
Living things will find safety in small spaces
I want to crawl in and feel safe too but
My brothers told me stories of the Boogie Man and I am
too ashamed to admit that I am still afraid
Sometimes I feel like I want to fall into the darkest part of you
And feel you catch me
Your arms pulling me in and reassuring me I am safe
I want to put my hands up to the rough rock walls behind us and
feel the grazes on my fingers sting with the
Understanding of what you are made of
Sometimes I want to lie on the sandy floor with you
just our toes touching
And stare up at the moss covered roof
Our breath slowing until only tiny expansions
Push our ribs toward each other
Holding any feeling safely in the caves of our chests
Making any thoughts that might have lingered
Fly up to the small pinpricks of lights
Emerging in the silence
Rocks lie dormant in
my abdomen
Four plaits are woven
From leaden limbs
Unravelled
With the careful fingers
Of nothingness, no one
Pushing and whining
Critiquing and complaining
Constraining my lips
Into a militant line
No energy for the push back of a pūkana
The quiet future of possibilities flickering
Pulling us closer than any past versions of ourselves
Could have remembered.
Remember my whare
The solidity of it
I’ll stand there on the pae
Breathing like a bird
Waiting for it’s mother
Waiting for the words to call you home
It’s bones creak like Nan’s
They are the curved pelvis
Surrounding me
As I move backwards inside our
Whare tangata
You all once lived here
Listen to the call
Tipping us off our path
Pulling us home
Watch out for the mokomoko
Trying to climb in and out
Defying death, is it me
Watch out for the mokopuna
Climbing out
Thinking that they don’t need to
Come home, is it me
Until we hear wailing
Calling us
The final fingernails
Of fire offered and we can choose
If they are thrown
Or cupped gently
In our hands
Turn us into birds
To escape
Or return us
As something new
Burning bright
Ki te ao mārama
Arihia Latham is a Kāi Tahu Māori writer, traditional rongoā Māori health practitioner, facilitator and Māmā in Wellington, Aotearoa (New Zealand). Her work has been published by Huia, Landfall, Oranui, Foodcourt, Te Whē, Awa Wāhine, The Spinoff and Pantograph Punch. She has presented at Verb festival, NZ Festival of the Arts and Te Hā.
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Tia Huia Ranginui (Ngati Hineoneone) was raised on the banks of the Whanganui Awa, where she resides today.
Her Turangawaewae features prominently in her work and provides a rich visual background to the themes she explores and critiques through inciting local narratives and subverting the way Maori have been (mis)represented in art and imagery post colonisation.
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