Rebecca Hawkes & essa may ranapiri
Verdant organza
Biologist puts her nose to the ground
a scent of crushed cauliflowers and
rotting dandelions
carrionflower milkweed all myths begin in mud
am I you are you my
unimaginable animal
given a medicinal drink
anodyne in chalcedony goblet
woe when the boy venus
is cast in aspersion
mosquito cinched
in amber
ascent of crushed dandelion
blown me at the seedhead
parachuting in a sutured
sunset divinity the intervening blade
that parts you from wasted meat
flensing for piety
a given body
give me a new doctrine lux aeterna
I am dry
dirt desperate for wetness
disrobed mongrel
you did not have to walk on your knees
I smelt you out
Cave as mouth opening
Creature is a free creature
BARK NOISE HE[ART] OF COW
[ICAN]HEAR OR BARE IT REP[EAT]
IN A GLASS CAVE MOVING
UNDER THE CANOPY LIKE DEADSEED
[THIN]G GLASS THING P[LAY] WITH [LIGHT]
PLAY F[OLDMEAT] UP INTO GARMENT
SLAYTH[IN]G TADPOLE
SCATTER IN LIKENESS TO/SUND[RIP]
MOTE DRUNK OVER THE LIKE GREEN ENDURE BE PRESENT
EVERYTHING EXISTS AS TASTE THE FATS OF THE EARTH!
THE SALT OF QUESTION MARK ME BODILY FREEDOM AS MEANING
LESS IS I THAT WAKES IN THE NOON SUN SUCKED INTO [FLING]ERING
WWWAVEFORM OR TEETHING SOLARSTORM
THIS FOREST IS QU[ARKSEX]PLODING
INTO A MIL[LION] DIFFERENT EYES AS NOT I WE USE VERY W[HERE] I WILL NOT
SIT WHERE U HAVE MADE SUR[FACE]
TO DIE ON
MASSIVELY COVERED IN G[LAIR]
Smorgasbord, sharing platter, bountiful cadaver
The Other Country introduces the Biologist to her own decomposing corpse
Who are you the ghost of? Whose ghost
have you eaten, inhaled, absorbed? A form made by charm
from flowers, wicked helix. Her infested lichen ringlet, her seep,
her healing salve, her single form coming undone
into what’s everything else. Uncontain yourself.
I can make a hand for you to hold if you need it.
Here – new limbs skewering from my nearest petals
little hinged fingers for stamens, nothing is sharper
than a baby’s fingernail
with pollen powder compacted safety orange
in the razor crescent & it burns in your bloodstream
when the handsy vine scrapes you for reaching
blindly. I feel you rigid
morsel darling, lying carcass prone. Who is she,
was, is still? Whose ghost latches in you like a zygote
of always already rotting flesh? What didn’t begin
at the moment of death? Have you looked
into her eyes yet? Her pupils open everywhere
greedy for it. Her odour titan arum. There is a magic
unlocked from the biotic processes.
There are a million tiny things fed
by a decomposing giant. And after some time
there is a resurgence of plant growth; heads set for the sun
pushing above the remains enriched by mortal miracle.
Look in her eyes again. See everything she sees
Which is everything you will ever... oh sweetmeat
don’t mind me. It’s the autolysis. I’m so hungry I could eat
myself! Hahahahahaha. Putrefaction is a kindness
or else it’s lovemaking. Besides, she’s already in you.
Rebecca Hawkes is a Canterbury-bred, Wellington-based painter and writer. Her poems have found homes in places like Scum, Sport, Starling, Sweet Mammalian and Mayhem. essa may ranapiri (takatāpui; they/them/ theirs) is a poet from Kirikiriroa. They have words in Mayhem, Poetry NZ, Brief, Starling, THEM and POETRY Magazine, and their debut collection RANSACK will be published by Victoria University Press in 2019.
Rebecca and essa were a part of the LitCrawl x Starling 2018 micro-residency programme, where six young writers were hosted by Wellington galleries over the weekend of 10-11 November to work on a current creative project. Rebecca and essa were in residence at the Wellington City Gallery, where they worked on a collection of poems titled eater be eaten exploring biospheres, beastliness, and boundaries. In the above excerpt from this collection, the Biologist enters a mystic fractal wilderness called The Other Country in search of her lost lover The Creature. The Biologist must reckon with her own assumptions and animality as she encounters a utopia of horrors. Meanwhile The Creature, rejecting the scientist’s requirement for categorisation, neither needs nor wants to be saved.