New poetry by Wellington poet and artist Ana Iti.

All the way to Te Rerenga Wairua

Does the spirit intrinsically know what direction to travel
to get to Hawaiki? Or Heaven?

Is there some colonial idea of blood quantum
that first has to be observed?

Would the saliva of the intangible get processed by ancestry.com
and then split, dispersing accordingly?

Another version of eternity soon to be available,
uploading a life’s worth of the most mundane correspondence,
a chatbot

All those emails and text messages
located traditionally

as you might expect, buried below ground
through cables under sea.

Thanatos in the shape of a stray anchor

Maybe, like the spiders escaping the low land of Papamoa
After the flooding of Cyclone Cook

It instead spits out a thread, spinnerets pulsing ectoplasm
or whatever is necessary

Until that strand is so vast proportionally
that it catches on a current

Transporting them / you / us