essa may Ranapiri (Ngāti Wehi Wehi, Ngāti Takatāpui, Clan Gunn) is a poet based in Kirikiriroa whose first collection of poems, Ransack, was longlisted for the 2020 Ockham New Zealand Book Awards. This poem, commissioned by Britomart and written in response to the state of lockdown, is entitled Take.
TAKE
it takes dancing pirouette in the lounge
ur dress swinging off ur naked body
mascara getting in ur eyes
tears
tear through the book u left unread for three years
it takes thawing the pastry over the vegetables
frying in the pan and almost burning the pastry but
catching it before
it gets to that
about being jealous of ur friend making
tino rangatiratanga design tees in
Animal Crossing
want to forget want to forget 40 days and 40 nights
it’s the calendar being a rough guide
pinned into a face we drew on the newspaper
is it approving is it trying to tell us something about the nature of the air
watch as Tane strains to push us apart so that we may see each other live
it takes freezing the very machine of capital
it takes rancid beats on the lives of the rich of the policy makers who would have us
all dread
it takes the drying flower crowns hanging up for heads to hold
it takes cracked egg with yolk break and cracked egg with yolk retained whole
it takes peeling the blutack off of the maramataka
it takes the moon leaning inwards to slow the tides of industry
it takes a boss that doesn’t understand what is going on
it takes playing battle royales all day
it takes being saved by GodJustLikeBanMe on Titanfall 2
it takes the kid outside on their trike and sound of plastic wheels on asphalt
it takes learning Māori in the morning
te whare nei
te pukapuka nei
te pene nei
te tītipi nei
tēnei wā
tēnei wāhi
it takes a spiral of people standing further and further apart
feet pressed into the earth hands raised to the sky like we’re summoning a spirit bomb to cleanse of our sickness
a mass exorcism as the free market shits itself
it takes posting horny selfies on Twitter and Instragram
to summon the ancestors
to summon the atua of no-more-neoliberalism
of no more exploitation of essential workers
no more selling the land for oil
no more backing behind the dollar
as it descends
no more landlords on their landlord thrones
no more real estate agents in their stolen homes
no more cops to enforce the tyranny of
big big big big business
no more pointing at the gdp and screaming this is the cost of people living on the streets living from couch to couch from meal to meal open mouths
no more colonial bullshit
to summon an atua that cares about tāngata whenua
block off ur roads my people
let the iwi rule on their rohe
let the people of the land keep it
keep the manu keep the ika
safe
keep the future held close in ur arms
let the people who take and take and takē
take stock of what they got
cos it’s nothing but a dollar sign
signifying [ ]
and leave them to their own devices
the clothes flying onto the couch
blinking out the black bits in ur eyes
kanikani ‘til you can’t no more
swinging ur arms around
hugging the curtains and singing
playing Tākaro while Netflix flickers on and on
the whole universe of online
the whole universe of fibre
holding together as we hold each other at arm’s length
this is what it takes to survive capitalism in its death throes
fingers crossed
