Hinemoana Baker

malady As our ancestors did before us we claw at ourselves and each other, we swell, seize up, snipe and bitch, hating each other for cytosines and thickenings, for the errors of general practitioners, for long nights awake without medicine. You scratch so hard you bruise yourself. I give away hours of night to the next yellow day. My mother remembers the rash that raged across her back and the fleshy heels of her palms. It vanished the day she said those words, under her breath, while stacking kindling in the shipping container we used for a woodshed. We left“Hinemoana Baker”

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