by Ankh Spice
Earthquake weather
Three faultlines knap what’s buried
into blades, scraping deep inside
the animal. On this south stretch
of her hide we hatch playing
a game – did you feel that? Wind,
or quake? Pick your unsettle – the rage
of a toddler-storm smacking over the blocks
of the house, or Rūaumoko sharpening
the range, whetting dark to draw
a jaggy line beneath your feet. No wonder
all the myths with jawbones, we clench
until it aches in the weather-
smile, grimace local as the civil
defence drills, both socketed in
before our adult teeth. Say severe,
say weather warning, say 120km gusts,
we say yep just another Tuesday
and traction for a coast long since skinned
all backbone. You can’t lie to a scale – by nature
we’re exposed, our struts, too, plained
to wreck by the most truthful half
of the year. The knife hurts, it hurts but swallow
this: how lucky to winter in the teeth. Be hard-
bitten, or go – break up
with the scour, pretend you’re civil, slink
your season’s story north to soft-
tongued hills and shut-in-lazy-vowels, rolled
sleeping dull beneath white quilts, send yourself
that Christmas card, kid, weird with glitter.
But know well-whistled bone will always play
the haunt – some places are not meant to rest.
One kind far windless morning, you’ll lean on in
to the shoulder of a southerly-gone, fall
flat, await the bite, the thrill of clouds belly-ripped
by canine rocks tusking the greyspittle lip
of the sea. Your smile then, too, honed by island blast
to predator-and-nerve. In snow-mute our kind dream
no angels, but in naked angles, no festive costume
of fir-sway for your party’s ridge, her hackles
the tangled wire of trees, prone
to grow sideways, rooted just enough in a scrape
of dirt. What are you, what are you
celebrating? Where’s the rasp
of June to say winter wraps no gifts but the wild
gamble of your reckless creature
still clinging, come spring. No miracle – you are
a snarl. A snarl unshaken, unshaken somehow still
from the seethe of the earth.
Note: In Aotearoa (New Zealand), midwinter and the beginning of the new year happen in June. In Māori mythology, Rūaumoko is responsible for earthquakes, and for the changing seasons. He is the youngest son of Ranginui (father sky) and Papatūānuku (mother earth), and brother to Tāwhirimātea – who is responsible for storms.
Ankh Spice is a sea-obsessed, queer-identified poet from Aotearoa. His work has been widely published internationally, with several poems nominated for the Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net, and one chosen as a winner of the Poetry Archive’s WorldView 2020 competition. You’ll find him and a lot of sea photography on Twitter @SeaGoatScreams or on Facebook @AnkhSpiceSeaGoatScreamsPoetry.