Poems by Apirana Taylor

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).