Stacey Teague (Ngāti Maniapoto/Ngāpuhi) is a Pākeha/Māori writer and editor currently living in Wellington, New Zealand. She is the poetry editor for Awa Wahine and has her Masters in Creative Writing from the International Institute of Modern Letters. She is the author of one full-length book, Takahē (Scrambler Books, 2014), and two chapbooks, not a casual solitude (Ghost City Press, 2017) and hoki mai (If A Leaf Falls Press, 2020).

spell to carve out space

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move your body as a wave / in the tsunami-safe zone / it’s one way to be seen / you know there’s a world beneath this one / you’ve been harbouring too many fantasies / you know they can become real / give up early in the day / go about your window-watching / on the screen the two women hold each other / pay close attention to where they place their hands / think about things that are not on fire /

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spell to erase and replace

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press a shell to your chest / so that it hears the ocean inside / listen to music that makes you grow lighter / speak across rooms / sleepless in your baby doll dress / move the colour wheel in your head / make new names for everything you see / Me is tree / He is plume / You is wave /

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​​spell for nowhere

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world of sisters / the magic we produce with our hands / important water we bathed ourselves in / dipped whole / deep materials / out there / I shed what I couldn’t love / eels kissed my legs / like lovers / from the shore / other narratives moved like smoke in the light / no silver skies / the music against me / there is my algae heart blooming / you chose river / we chose ocean / I held up my phone to catch an image / rejoicing / he wairua / made pūtangitangi out of clay from the ground / dried in the sun by the river’s edge / spent our days learning how to place our mouths / we knew feelings / deified voices / lesser shame / full stomachs / I lived here /

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