Poems by Apirana Taylor

Emma Smith, "Girl with Death Mask" (2008).
Emma Smith, "Girl with Death Mask" (2008).

fighting with words

hate is tattooed

beneath the knuckles

of my right fist

love beneath those

of my left

my words are

uppercuts

my lines are

left and right hooks

each verse is a jab

i fight with hate

and love when I write

with an upper cut

a left and right hook

and a jab




dame Margot on the line

dame Margot raises

        her hands

        to the sky


hanging out the washing

            the sheets

Franks rugby sox


teen Tanias

thousand and one towels


in a pirouette

she spins the world around


remembers when she was

        the Queen


dancing with the stars

    on Saturday night


the streets and lights

       called her name


Margret Brown


dancing in the city


how sweet to make love

             in the rain


now there’s hooverin to do


hell the washing machine

      shakes the state house

         like Ruaumoko


at night the dark wind

             blows


the sheets and towels are weeping ghosts

            whirling around

               the moon


love went to get the milk one morning

        fifteen years ago


he rang her from Aus once


Frank and Tania don’t know him


          ‘it was for the best’

                she says


            pegging things out


she’s dame Margot on the line

      still dancing in there

              somewhere


and her heart sings like the birds

         in the trees


        her wairua

like the wild wind and sea




rat a tat tat

rat a tat tat


whose that knocking


rat a tat tat

rat a tat tat


it’s machine-gun Johnny


chatter chat chat

chatter chat chat


sweeping the field


rat a tat tat

rat a tat tat


looking for the boy in a man sized hat


for a chatter chat chat

chatter chat chat


for empire adventure and all that


rat a tat tat

rat a tat tat


the bullets spat

from the nostrils of the gun


rat a tat tat

rat a tat tat


mothers weep

there lies your son


rat a tat tat

rat a tat tat


16 years old

fancy that


rat a tat tat

rat a tat tat


freedoms not cheap


rat a tat tat

rat a tat tat

do we remember


chatter chat chat

rat a tat tat


whose that knocking


rat a tat tat

chatter chat chat


“Rat a tat tat” was first published in A Canoe in Midstream (Christchurch: Canterbury Univeristy Press, 2009).