Issue 215

givalpress
Oct 31
17 min read

ArLiJo, Issue 215

Special issue of poetry from New Zealand, edited by Chris Tse.

This issue features

photograph by Casimir,
poetry by Chris Tse,
photograph by Henner Damke,
poetry by Sudha Rao,
photograph by Kyohei Miyazaki,
poetry by Rebecca Hawkes,
photograph by Pablo Hidalgo,
poetry by Joshua Toumu’a,
poetry by Kiri Piahana-Wong, and
photograph by Casimir

(Glossary)

Casimir

Morning Sun, New Zealand

Chris Tse

Audience & performer

(after Lubaina Himid)

You enter a room

where a conversation has been unfolding

for centuries.

Disclosures & anecdotes settle between stitches,

between erasure—

here we are lettered by what is only sayable

when certain lines

converge. It’s impossible not to see how past &

present hold power

& gesture towards an allegory or an inconvenient

truth. Even

the remnants—recognition stripped to pieces &

outlines—

bear the impulse of once upon a… & in the beginning.

Sit in jigsaws

like how a poet rolls words in their mouth until

familiarity attaches

itself to every edge & corner. Rebirth is wrought

in love or fear.

A fire has left its unkind regards; a landscape has

been carved.

You look & listen as both audience & performer,

return to

versions of yourself repeatedly until one of you

speaks, illuminated.

Every sentence should end in a welcome—a blank

space wide enough

for imagination to turn the soil & send waiata

into the infinite sky.

—string—games—

(after Maureen Lander)

1. Lost

I make a myth out of smoke—I make order with 1s & 0s—I make the solar system crack open—I make time for making—I make dreams & nightmares out of a shopping list—I make an escape path—I make pathwaysin & out of Paradise—I make a time capsule—I make a heist movie set piece—I make danger a possibility— I make the sea rise in sync with our mood rings—I make sure to fall in love with a man who will survive—I make one perfect circle—I make bridges & portals—I make a distraction—I make the unknown knowable—I make the known unknowable—I make art history a compulsory school subject—I make magic—I make new limits to meaning—I make a mountain—I make the distance shrink—I make skyscrapers disappear from Google Street View—I make conincidence rejoice—I make gravity reatreat from its own insecurities—I make tradition new again—I make a comeback for forgotten fables—I make music out of clay—I make eels glow in the dark—I make a knot in every loop—I make lightning & thunder from a length of sky—I make patterns shake hands with logic—I make myself a fool—I make pleasure a taut beauty—I make rain feel what I feel—I make it last.

2. Found

I make a golden donation— I make all the difference—I make souvenirs—I make my own art—I make abstraction three-dimensional— I make new research—I make minds bend—I make carbon—I make coverage from top to bottom—I make support—I make a dadaist poem—I make up our history —I make a self out of objects—I make medals for everyday heroes—I make an allowance for connection—I make the maker a manifesto—I make cats sleeping inside cradles—I make thinking a game—I make a private nation public—I make decisions to protest—I make it work—I make a selection of mollusc shells—I make every job easier—I make tapa cloth—I make material accessible—I make & sell a racist stereotype—I make an impact—I make 30 slices of ginger crunch—I make a flute from sperm whale teeth—I make a tool for tradition—I make a habit of listening to buildings—I make my debut—I make a collection of applications—I make bottoms bigger—I make circadian noises—I make make new & unexpected poetry—I make the most of genius—I make a quilt to remember—I make unscrupulous citizens obey—I make a fanzine on a beam of starlight—I make a cluster of stars—I make way for the new—I make myself at home.

Stones, bones

(after Barry Lett)

There stands the totem, in service of stillness & consistency,

master & servant of its pact with time. Its protection ensures

our future & frames the battlegrounds we can’t deny. Behind

the door are shadows brokering days of imagination. The elusive

story is one step ahead. Under the stones, bones. Under the bones,

a long line of guardians. Questions & answers seep up through

the cracks. Fingertips seek out a warning that bites back. Our best

bet is to uncover the life closest to the record, to say each name

we catch at the surface—any that could stand for mythology.

Any that could stand for proof of an invisible joy. Once you say

them out loud you will believe. Roll over & shake the past awake.

An artist’s fever. A collector’s dash in the dark. All the arrows

pointing towards the sources of our faith. Wash their tails

in the river & heed the bark of the sleeping dog at the door

who lets us wake with all our dreams intact.

About the Author

Chris Tse is a poet and editor based in Te Whanganui-a-Tara | Wellington, Aotearoa New Zealand. He is the author of three poetry collections published by Auckland University Press: How to be Dead in a Year of Snakes (winner of the 2016 Jessie Mackay Award for Best First Book of Poetry), HE’S SO MASC, and Super Model Minority (a finalist for the 2023 Lambda Literary Award for Gay Poetry and longlisted at the 2023 Ockham New Zealand Book Awards). He and Emma Barnes edited Out Here: An Anthology of Takatāpui and LGBTQIA+ Writers from Aotearoa. In 2022, Chris was named New Zealand’s 13^th Poet Laureate and completed his term in August 2025. He was a 2024 fellow of the University of Iowa’s International Writing Program Fall Residency and a 2025 Nederlands Letterenfonds writer in residence.

Henner Damke

Maori Statue in Front of Volcano Taranaki, New Zealand

Sudha Rao

Mystical river of love tanka

Single minded, I

a riverine, a-bridging

multitude prayers,

my sad universe seeks

an abyss for love potent

my single prayer

fell, a rolling marble fall

into an old mystery,

a river mingling love-

fire billowed, as molten

lava fled down,

an abyss yawned

into a cathedral for

a warm river-bed slaking

my thirst, shattered grief

shimmered beneath

stone, silt, pebbled waters ran

to free, to end the haunt,

incomprehensible hunt,

preyed for their innocence

Loss and longing fado

Hers

She flew on an unprepared adventure and rested under a kawakawa, their heart-leaves speckled water and shade. A torrent bubbled in her mouth, she spat torment, her long, her love, her long past, a closed eyelid. She asked where does the rainbow hide in this land and cried – I am a helpless chant at a bardo. I am a breathing reminder of the feather I let go. I am a weathered stone missing rain.

Maybe a familiar intimacy will set me alight again.

His

He sat under a kawakawa. He had walked a long way to an honour. A limp, red-black-white flag borne by his belly sobbed – our blood is engraved in this land, my tūpuna gave you destiny. I fought for you but I did not win. His waiata unleashed his veins, my sister, you old pōhutukawa, survive every winter only to drop red every summer. He cried, I am a helpless chant, I am a breathing reminder of a feather taken from me. I am a living spectre.

He lifted aroha to the sun as I stood on his side.

Mine

I had walked through a carnival with a bandhani kawakawa leaf-mask, a shield for my bewilderment.

The carnival brought birds from elsewhere, remembering their long flights of fancy, their birds of prey.

Brightness, heralded by waiata and longing, underscored the beauty of difference and unity.

Long ago, I held a feather with a barb for destruction, a slow crossing out of all things other than.

Now I hold a single feather from a single bird from a single tree no longer bearing flower or fruit.

I am a longing seed buried at the edge of loss.

Kyohei Miyazaki

The Starry Sky of Red Rocks in Wellington, New Zealand

Prayer at a constellation of eclipses (April 2024)

solar eclipse

Moon, you hypnotise oceans into everlasting play-loops, entice turtle hatchlings, control sap-rising in my garden and pull off a solar eclipse. When the mighty sun hid behind your innocence, all the world darkened to another cold stone. Birds flew into roosts in the middle of the day, bemused by their short night, woke up causing an unusual cacophony. Moon, no one saw the ocean flattened to a sleeping taniwha, waves clinging to unsteady shores. You, a tiny-mighty circling force, caused a catastrophe of togetherness in a country divided by hunger for a futile race. An adoration of your magic. Moon, as you returned the sun back to us, I trembled forewarned, remembering our origin, with our common song on my tongue. Moon, wipe the ocean’s salt beached on my cheek.

lunar eclipse

trees chant

clouds billow

the north wind is on fire

leaves fringed

like teeth mark time

a white flower drops still fresh with sap

perhaps for an ant to find a home

a cicada drops from the lemon tree

limbs flailing, sparkling green,

a fresh new hatchling,

burning bright beside the flower,

catches a sparrow’s attention

pecks the abdomen

bisected, the head, a spinning top,

body moves with wings poised

for a take-off

the sparrow guards

a dark mass of quiet restfulness

life torn beside a white flower

fallen waiting for its own demise

i can watch no more

About the Author

Originally from Karnataka, South India, Sudha Rao is a Wellington-based poet and writer. Sudha began her connection with arts learning Bharata Natyam, a South Indian Classical

dance style in Pondicherry, India. Sudha’s long career as a dancer and choreographer in classical and contemporary styles culminated with her appointment as the first chief executive of Dance Aotearoa New Zealand, a national infrastructure organisation for dance, funded by Creative New Zealand. Since 2012, Sudha’s poetry has appeared in several of anthologies, including Landfall, Best New Zealand Poems, Ko Aotearoa Tatou We are New Zealand and A kind of shelter Whakaruru -taha: An anthology of new writing for a changed world. Sudha’s first collection of poems, On elephant’s shoulders, was published in 2022 by Cuba Press, Wellington. Sudha is currently working on her second collection as well as a first draft of a novel.

Rebecca Hawkes

Red Delicious

Speaking of how, at the party, you

had let your knuckles be blushed, I took it

to mean drunken pugilism rouged

those fists – not this dainty makeup brush

of powdered cochineal and mica dust

highlighting the low peaks of your fingers.

Your only immodesty: the hands.

Vascular traceries painted blue

with crushed lapis to spill the river braids

from lacy veins. Such vanity for these

extremities, tender clenches of joint

and tendon. Nothing else seems so sultry

as when you beckon with them – reach

to show me my own blood as it dries

rawdog claret on your prints.

Relief of carmine seasonality:

amaranth anew, the bloomed arches

of bleeding hearts that burst beneath

the neighbors’ hedge. Let’s decant

our concentrated cranberry

to consecrate the bladders. Utilitarian

cosmopolitans, swizzled for anthocyanidins,

salt and sugar on the rim. Not for us

brutish fisticuffs, excepting when I chomp

fresh apples ripely from your cheeks. Gift you

a little spittle glitter. Smudge charcoal at the lash-line

to adorn your beach-glass irises.

Adoration of my hart, my doe,

your wide o-eyes just like the earth as seen

from space. Its bluish lowercase. Down

where I walk on my hind legs,

and all our lips are bitten red.

Small Hours

How to elide my unequivocal prohibition

on mentioning that light? Sheen of the sweltered-

off sheet. Like leftover snow on the night walk –

peeled moon-rind. Just enough to watch the deer-

lashed shut-eye. Contemplate prey drive.

Hate when people call upon the meat

of the mitt but press mouth anyways to your

thumb’s tender anchor. Bad habit to be so

besotted. Giddy with sobriety. Hair mussed, I am

exactly where I am. In the not

completely dark. In the half awake. It is nice

and nice inside the niceness.

Pablo Hidalgo

Limestone Formations at Pancake Rocks,

West Coast, South Island, New Zealand

Petoskey Stone

Fossil corals stare back

from the carpark gravel.

I’ve got my eye now

for the lake stones –

chert and agates, shells from seas

that long ago forgot themselves.

Tattooed lines under my skin

have blurred illegible with sun.

Will all these months

of honey gild

the curtains

at the attic window?

O ocean, I can

disappear from anywhere.

Even you,

even here, (like light)

leaking through

these two cupped hands.

The air purple with ash

is making everyone

look lovely.

I need to see you

in the harsh light

of my country.

No more bellbirds off my phone,

the spelled-out syllables of korimakō.

It’s time to sleep

under the crown-shy trees

and wait for the waking birds

to name me.

Blood Orange

For Nikki-Lee Birdsey

hello sanguinello

a torn membrane thumbed through

yields albedo under the nails

when we share one shrunken planet

our forgettable hemisphere

drenched in the august ultraviolets

of an incorrect season

where nesting kererū

gurgled in your gutters

the sun sliced through

haloes of freeze-dried blood orange

softened in a fizzing meniscus

whiskeyed on the stairs of your dark garden

I snapped my tendon stumbling homeward

always bringing you my pain this way

when you had so little to spare for it

only the unflinching honesty of ice

weeping in tea towels that bound the sprain

or freshly chilled champagne coupes

in which to raise again our liquid cruelties

remind me how much of your life

did you think you weren’t living truly

diary of a ghostling fallen from the tree

now it is my turn to taste unreality

girlish chrysalis translucent in the time slip

this is not my beautiful house

this is not my beautiful body

I need not partition this citrus to say it

I miss you

and how good it was to love

without the laying on of hands

reaching instead to tear at sourdough

and petals of prosciutto

spit strawberry sepals into the heart-line

split sisterly segments of sinister clementine

it’s not like you’re here with me now but it’s true

I know what it is you would tell me to do

your face every year more radiant under the snail slime

each of my secrets like steaming mussels

unbound by hot white wine

About the Author

Rebecca Hawkes is a queer painter-poet from rural Aotearoa New Zealand. Her first book was Meat Lovers (Auckland University Press), finalist for the Lambda Literary Awards in the USA and winner of a Laurel Prize for ecopoetry in the UK. Her chapbooks are Softcore Coldsores (AUP New Poets) and Hardcore Pastorals (Cordite). She is lead editor of New Zealand poetry journal Sweet Mammalian and co-edited the Pacific climate poetics anthology No Other Place to Stand. Rebecca recently completed an MFA in yearning (and, to a lesser extent, poetry) at the University of Michigan in the USA, where her poems have won prizes from Palette Poetry, Salt Hill, Yes Yes Books, the Hopwood Awards, and the Academy of American Poets.

Joshua Toumu'a

the dancers

it’s true the taste of jam

still lingers on your inner mouth

i can taste how maceratedly plum

your cheeks have turned

from each pass of my tongue

i can taste what you have yet to say to me

so don't bother to spill your breath

between us it is only breakfast

and vodka and lavender smoke

and even when we spill

out of the dance floor

stumbling like newborn horses

the movement within follows close

behind in the form of ghostly rainfall

horizontal and dancing

through my vision like tiny pale flies

or cinders in the burning of neon light

and while you hold me by the hand i find

it's hard to even remember you at all

like you are a silk dancer

slipping backwards

up the cloth of my mind

or backlit danseur

enshrouded by a scrim

though perhaps this elusiveness is my own

leaving my body behind the wheel

of a car careening into yours

whose keys sat wrapped in paper

pressed against the dark

purple vein of my tongue

until they dissolved

I Can Be Fun!

even when I am a bony street dog

roaming pale, dust-soaked roads

nipping at your heel.

When you bring your bike to a halt

to grab a nearby stone to hurl,

I can be fun then, too.

At the bakery, you bring your bike

to a halt, stirring the limestone street

into a hurricane.

You peer through the glass

and there I am! resting on the display

drenched in mock cream, fresh out the oven

and I can be fun if you choose me.

In your hand I am the paper

protecting your palm and I am still

when you lay me to rest in a ditch.

I can be fun here, despite it all.

Despite the rain, the dogs

rooting across my underbelly

for the linger smell of meat,

despite everything you put me through,

I can be fun at parties

even when I am the sticky scum

coating the floor, or the thin

meniscus of tension

dividing you from the evening.

I can take you as you are

and I wouldn’t bat an eye,

because I can be fun

even when I am a street dog

and your palm is full of stones.

Fragrantica page for Mediocre Sex

TOP NOTES:

Your faux-leather belt, Mid-winter air, Endearingly banal conversation, Ozonic with

a human undertone, CK Eternity, Wet gravel, Razor burn, Badly creased laundry, Equal

parts toothpaste and saliva, A quick Red Bull, Two shots of vodka for good luck, A third

shot for bravery.

MIDDLE NOTES:

The familiar saltiness of skin, Cramp, Apologies, Unclean linen, Mostly bruising but just a little blood, A strip of Tom Ford Tobacco Vanille, The artificial sweet

of lube, Over-The-Counter medication, Sore throats, Hours of training,

Minutes of intimacy.

BASE NOTES:

Lukewarm water, The sanctity of the body, Boredom, Your third shower, A door slightly too ajar for your liking, The sting of aftershave, The sting

of torn flesh, Dry denim, Misbuttoned button-downs, Physical distance,

Wanton, Emotions that sound like boutique brand names: Languor,

Malaise, Musk.

About the Author

Joshua Toumu’a is a queer Pasifika poet and university student living in Te Whanganui-a-Tara. He was the winner of the 2022 Schools Poetry Award, and has featured in Starling, Symposia, The Spinoff, Bad Apple, and elsewhere. Recently, he performed in “Love Letterz” at the 2025 Kia Mau festival and attended the writers’ wānaka for the 2025 New Zealand Young Writers Festival.

Kiri Piahana-Wong

Pink flowers at the new house / Waiting

Every year on my birthday, my mother gave me a card with pink flowers

And she gave me real flowers, too.

At every new flat she would arrive, bearing a pot of flowers, usually bright pink impatiens, for my deck, garden, or front doorstep

Growing up, we had an extensive vegetable garden, but mum taught me that flowers are important too

In my new home in Whanganui, I spend days digging out the garden beds and planting vegetables

I plant tomatoes, runner beans, sugar snap peas, cucumber, perpetual spinach, silverbeet, rhubarb, strawberries, zucchini, mint, thyme, parsley, basil and corn.

The soil is sandy here, and needs a lot of assistance if the plants are to thrive

As I weed my garden, I can hear the sea

For many days I’m aware that I’m waiting for my mother to come with the flowers

But she doesn’t arrive

I’m waiting for my mother to call me

But she doesn’t call

Finally I hear my mother’s voice telling me that I need to plant the flowers myself now.

I drive to Springvale Garden Centre and I buy impatiens, geraniums, daisies, gerbera and petunias, all of them pink. I pull out the spare pots lying around my house, some of them filled with old dirt, some of them broken, and I plant the flowers in them. I plant petunias amongst the vegetables, and add some marigolds for the bees.

I water the new flowers every day, at dusk as the sky is falling and the spray of water drifts

in the air like a veil and I know that soon my mum will be arriving to see the flowers.

As I look over at the gate, I can see her, coming up the driveway slowly with her walker, complaining about the stones, shimmering in the evening air.

Today is not the day

Today is not the day my mother died

I woke up early

I watered the plants

I made breakfast for my child

Today is not the day my mother died

I got dressed and put on sunscreen

We drove to the supermarket

I bought strawberries, apricots and grapes

Today is not the day my mother died

We had lunch at a café and the man teased

my son about not eating his lettuce.

I ordered bow tie pasta. I ate all of it

Today is not the day my mother died

As we sat eating a simple dinner

I looked at the clock

Yesterday, at this time, my mother died

And they would call me on the phone

And I’d be driving to the hospital

And I’d be sitting by my mother’s body

Today is not the day my mother died

Lemon thyme / At eight

I’m eight years old and I’m busy pressing flowers,

making potpourri from a neighbour’s discarded

rose petals, and growing herbs – for remedies and

for the way they smell rubbed between my fingers

in the early mornings that I tend them before school.

In my burgeoning herb garden I grow angelica,

lemon thyme, rosemary, sage, parsley and oregano.

I love these little plants. In my flower garden in

another part of the backyard I plant bulbs – freesias

and daffodils to blossom in the spring.

In my spare time after school, after watching Smurfs

and The Lost Islands on TV and completing homework

tasks, I do embroidery – cross stitch is my favourite,

but I’m also teaching myself back stitch and chain stitch

from a book – and I knit. Scarves for my dolls, mainly.

I am the uncontested mistress of my own small

universe.

Sometimes I think about that girl, in the way you might

consider a friend you used to know, and I miss her.

I still grow herbs that I use to flavour the food I cook

my family. I still grow flowers. I’ve given up potpourri

and pressing flowers, probably because those pursuits

now seem fussy and old-fashioned.

During the early pandemic I took up cross stitch

again. I got a tiny way through an ambitious design

for Pōhutukawa trees shading a caravan before I

gave up and never came back to it. I am not eight

years old anymore and everything that gives me

pleasure now is also shot through with a kind of

non-specific anxiety, time scarcity and the internal

measurement of my own productivity. None of it

is unadulterated.

Even gardening is a pleasure that is also a chore akin

to having another child, although there is joy in

observing how the basil doesn’t really mind me

leaving it to go to seed, how the mint enjoys taking

over unchecked and there is lemon thyme everywhere,

even under the front steps. Yesterday I paused rushing

into the house and took a leaf between my fingers,

releasing and imprinting its scent into my skin. It smells

like being eight years old and dragging the skirt of my

dress through the mud of the garden, digging my bare

feet into the earth while I pull up weeds. It smells like

lemon, and fresh air, and the wind. It smells like

tonight’s dinner. I need to hurry inside and defrost

the chicken.

About the Author

Kiri Piahana-Wong is a poet, editor and publisher of Māori, Chinese, English and Scottish ancestry. She is the author of two poetry collections, Night Swimming (Anahera Press, 2013) and Tidelines (Anahera Press, 2024). Kiri co-edited Te Awa o Kupu (Penguin NZ, 2023), an anthology of contemporary Māori literature, as well as Short | Poto: The big book of small stories (Massey University Press, 2025). She lives in Whanganui.

Casimir

Sunset, New Zealand

Glossary

Aroha – is a Māori word generally translated as ‘love’ but includes several others attributes such as feeling compassion, pity, empathy, and concern.

Bandhani – an ancient Indian resist dyeing technique, practiced mainly in Gujarat and Rajasthan, India. The fabric is intricately tied and knotted with thread to create patterns before being dyed. The word comes from the Sanskrit word "bandh," meaning "to tie".

Fado – Portuguese form of soulful and mournful folk music, characterized by haunting ballads of loss, longing, and fate.

Kawakawa – is a native New Zealand shrub, whose leaves were recognised by the Māori for its medicinal and healing properties. Kawakawa leaves are heart shaped and often made into an herbal tea for aiding digestion and nerves or used for other treatments such a poultice to treat skin ailments.

Pōhutakawa – is a New Zealand native tree, also known as New Zealand’s Christmas tree as its bright red blooms cover the tree over the Christmas period. The pōhutakawa is sacred to Māori. For some, its fallen crimson flowers are said to represent the blood of the Māori warrior, Tawhaki when he was felled during his attempt to find help in heaven to avenge his father's death.

Taniwha – In the Māori world view, taniwha are supernatural creatures whose forms and characteristics varied and seen as part of the natural environment. They are considered to usually live in or near the water, such as lakes, rivers, the sea or pools and caves. In some Māori traditions, taniwha are viewed as guardians and in others as terrifying creatures. Their forms include reptile-like creatures, sharks, dolphins and logs in rivers. They are known to be able shape shift.

Tanka – is an old form of Japanese poetry that goes back to the seventh century. Tanka are ‘short songs’ and was used in medieval Japan as a pastime by its peoples generally as love letters. A tanka poem has 31 syllables. Historically, the tanka was written in an unbroken line. The modern Japanese version is formatted as a three-line poem. The western version, used in my poem has 31 syllables split over five lines.

The syllables are split as follows – Line 1: 5 syllables; Line 2: 7 syllables; Line 3: 5 syllables; Line 4: 7 syllables; Line 5: 7 syllables

The content structure is prescribed, where the first three lines are descriptive (this section of the tanka is called the kami-no-ku, the upper phase), while the final two lines are more reflective (called the shimo-no-ku, the lower phase).

Tūpuna or Tīpuna – means, grandparents or ancestors in te reo Māori (Māori language).

Waiata (noun) – Māori word or son, chant, or psalm.