my father was jake heke
my father was jake heke
& he smashed up more than fucking eggs.
he pulversied
tata katoa i roto i te whānau/almost everything in the family.
ko jake heke taku pāpā
he raruraru nui ia
i te wā katoa
my papa was jake heke
& when he drank -
which was every day –
he mōrearea ia ki te katoa/he was a danger to all.
ko jake heke taku pāpā
he raruraru nui ia
i te wā katoa
my father was jake heke
& I was the abeyant bullet
who should have fled
the barrel.
should have smashed
jake heke.
once & for all.
Vaughan Rapatahana (Te Ātiawa) commutes between homes in Hong Kong, Philippines, and Aotearoa New Zealand. He is widely published across several genre in both his main languages, te reo Māori and English and his work has been translated into Bahasa Malaysia, Italian, French, Mandarin, Romanian, Spanish, Esperanto. He is the author and editor/co-editor of over 50 books. His latest is Sexual Predation and TEFL (De Gruyter Brill, 2025), a further critique of agents pushing the English language on to Indigenous communities.
