Poem of the Week: TREATY by Reihana MacDonald

From: AUP New Poets 3, 1998

Tin of cocoa
Tin of cocoa
Tin of cocoa

All at sea
On a boat
No one land

Talk talk talk
Lie lie lie
Walk walk walk

Shake on it
Fight over it
Sing on the
Dotted line

Now we two
Take time out
Eat our fill
Sing to stars

All that’s left
Of all we
Say is one

Tin of cocoa

Reihana MacDonald Robinson lives and works in both the USA and Aotearoa New Zealand her homeland. She is an artist, writer and organic farmer. Auckland University Press published her collection Waiting for the Palagi in AUP NEW POETS 3, 2008. Her poems and stories have appeared in Landfall, University of Otago, Cutthroat, Melusine, Takahe, Legible 5 Roses, Hawai’i Review, Enamel and in anthologies such as Te Ao Marama Contemporary Maori Writing. She is the inaugural recipient of the Te Atairangi Kaahu award for poetry in New Zealand.