A selection of new poems by Hana Pera Aoake.

Editor’s note: These three excerpts are taken from a larger, book length poem titled ‘Some helpful models of grief’ published this June by Compound Press.

ACT 1, F, PAGE 17.

I fly too close to the sun to get close to you and I miss the constant back and forth and now every film watch reminds me that I can’t tell you about it and every book read and every song I listen to and all the art learn about and I wonder about the archive of my skin and remember falling asleep together over faceTime but run through simple gestures you made over and over and over and ileft myself open to be wounded and this loss is immense and i’m asked what is your first aesthetic experience that you remember and i’m jealous because this has always been your world and ifeel so fraudulent in this orbit and felt trapped in a labyrinth or an art opening so construct some wings made of molten feathers and threads from blankets riddled with disease and taken as payment for land and use leather straps cut loose from the belts holding me together and sealed it with beeswax but you warned me not to fly too low or my wings would fill with water but you warned me not to fly too high or my wings would melt so flew into the sun.

ACT 4, B, PAGE 46.

I’d rather be wrong than right but you are short sighted so it’s better to give than receive so here we are in this state of lingering in the cloud of the unknowable because there is no tenderness can relay through WhatsApp but we think about it too much and i’m teaching her to use the toilet while you fix a bathtub falling through the floorboards and wrapped you up in my hair that cut and then cast you into the sea and the concreteness of the world looms in my cheekbones that flash red and we hold our emotions in the stomach and smile like a Cheshire Cat and my perfume gives you hayfever but about half the data being captured by the camera sensor is noise like the sound of a screaming toddler pulling on my arms who wants to run into the danger but desire and nervousness hold steady even when the ground shakes and splits even as rūāumoko is nursed in his mothers arms crying.

ACT 4, H, PAGE 52.

Plato sits on his deck rubbing sunscreen into his leather elbows after mowing the lawns and running his sprinkler all night despite the water shortages. We see this and realise that we have spent our entire lives chained by our necks and ankles where we can see only the empty wall of a cave. We can see shadows on the outer walls with objects carried behind the inner wall but we cannot see who is carrying them, only the shadows from the fire behind them. Each object is pronounced but we see them only as them coming from the shadows. It is our only reality and not a representation of the real world. The shadows represent only distorted blurred copies of the reality we can understand through senses, but only the sun can show us the true forms of the objects. One day we understand that the shadows on the wall are not the direct source of the images we see and we feel the warmth of the sun.

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