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Cindy Ana 🇳🇿

@kakapowhakatoi.bsky.social

930 followers 1.9K following 540 posts

Would rather write than talk. Sometimes I don’t read skeets properly, especially pre-coffee. Rāmere is my favourite day. Published with Broken Spine Arts. Work online in Flash Frontier, Voicemail Poems Please click on ‘media’ to read some of my poems

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Cindy Ana 🇳🇿 @kakapowhakatoi.bsky.social · 27d

I am thrilled this poem got a special mention in Given Words 2025. It is amongst a wonderful collection of works, please fill your Friday afternoon reading.
I have added a glossary in the comments for those unfamiliar with Te Reo.

nzgivenwords.blogspot.com/2025/09/give...

No Te Paruparu, No Te Purapura Of the Mud, Of the Seed
They came to me while barefoot in bitter mud, with acons angry whakapapa, they held me there.
Hands stretched through flesh soaked earth, wrapped my feet in weighted expectation.
My soles a pair of seeds, husks waiting to be pierced by
a justice of tipuna, as steadfast as battle-blooded taiaha.
Hope takes root.
Lightfast, it endures this bright white blaze.

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Cindy Ana 🇳🇿 @kakapowhakatoi.bsky.social · 4d

Aotearoa poet Joel LeBlanc has been nominated for Best of the Net 2026 for his magical poem ‘in my dreams i saved us’
Published in Stone Circle Review
@cottageinwood.bsky.social
@stonecirclereview.bsky.social

stonecirclereview.com/in-my-dreams/

in my dreams i saved us

by Joel LeBlanc A voice sings a lullaby: “The animals went in two by two, Hurrah! Hurrah!” Noah is drunk in the corner, grieving the past, he thought the ark would make him happy. Naamah is wash...

stonecirclereview.com

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Cindy Ana 🇳🇿 @kakapowhakatoi.bsky.social · 4d

Ātaahua! He nui te rahi?

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MiMi Aye @meemalee.bsky.social · 5d

Author and filmmaker Justine Bateman on generative AI

"They're trying to convince people they can't do the things they've been doing easily for years - to write emails, to write a presentation. Your daughter wants you to make up a bedtime story about puppies - to write that for you." We will get to the point, she says with a grim laugh, "that you will essentially become just a skin bag of organs and bones, nothing else. You won't know anything and you will be told repeatedly that you can't do it, which is the opposite of what life has to offer. Capitulating all kinds of decisions like where to go on vacation, what to wear today, who to date, what to eat.
People are already doing this. You won't have to process grief, because you'll have uploaded photos and voice messages from your mother who just died, and then she can talk to you via AI video call every day. One of the ways it's going to destroy humans, long before there's a nuclear disaster, is going to be the emotional hollowing-out of people." - author and filmmaker Justine Bateman from a piece by Emine Saner for the Guardian

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Cindy Ana 🇳🇿 @kakapowhakatoi.bsky.social · 5d

They used Toitu te Tiriti to increase party membership

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Cindy Ana 🇳🇿 @kakapowhakatoi.bsky.social · 5d

100%

Cindy Ana 🇳🇿 @kakapowhakatoi.bsky.social · 6d

Tino ataahua!

Cindy Ana 🇳🇿 @kakapowhakatoi.bsky.social · 6d

Jfc! And every one of those job seekers is just lazy 🙄

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Paragraph Planet @paragraphplanet.bsky.social · 8d

"Jason regretted the extra sugar in his coffee" by Cindy Kurukaanga @kakapowhakatoi.bsky.social is today's 75-word #story on Paragraph Planet paragraphplanet.com #writingcommunity

Creative writing website for authors and readers. 75 words, changing daily. Submit your paragraph today.

A flash fiction website for writers and readers. One 75 word tale published daily. Plus author interviews and writing group map

paragraphplanet.com

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Cindy Ana 🇳🇿 @kakapowhakatoi.bsky.social · 9d

Thank you @paragraphplanet.bsky.social
My little story is today’s paragraph.

Today's 75-word Paragraph
Jason regretted the extra sugar in his coffee.
It is the reason he is standing in a bank vault.
A cacophony of alarms and shouting growing louder as smoke congests the shrinking space. His thoughts narrow to the rich black syrup Maeve poured into his mug this morning. His usual one sugar added without expression. The second, delivered with her knowing sneer; the look she gets when she knows he will do whatever she says.
By: Cindy Kurukaanga

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Cindy Ana 🇳🇿 @kakapowhakatoi.bsky.social · 11d

She’s saving that gem.

Reposted by Cindy Ana 🇳🇿

takahē magazine @takahemagazine.bsky.social · 14d

Last call for entries! The Monica Taylor Poetry Prize closes at the end of September, so don't miss your chance to be part of this beloved competition.

💚$300 first prize + publication in the December issue of takahē
💚$150 runner up

www.takahe.org.nz/submit/

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Cindy Ana 🇳🇿 @kakapowhakatoi.bsky.social · 14d

This is so good!

The B'K Magazine @thebkmagazine.bsky.social · 14d

CW: Ableism

When I am old, I will not wear purple.
I will be purple. Bruised knuckles from knocking on closed doors,
lip split from biting down words they do not want to hear.

Read more of "Warning" by Aspen Greenwood in The B'K Mag, Vol 16, Issue 3: www.talbot-heindl.com/bitchin_kitsch

Image is the cover art by Jennie Cao which features double green self-portraits of the artist where one is whispering into the other's ear. There is a bright sunset and a stormy ocean behind them. Text overlaid is the exerpt of Aspen's piece.

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Cindy Ana 🇳🇿 @kakapowhakatoi.bsky.social · 18d

Congratulations @merrildsmith.bsky.social !

tiny wren lit @tinywrenlit.bsky.social · 19d

Congratulations to our Best of the Net nominees!

Floral background in the style of William Morris. Text: Best of the Net, tiny wren lit
Memento Mori (8/27/2024)
“Last Wish,” Karen Grace Soans
“Stillborn,” Vic Nogay
“Rupture,” Paul Allatson

Golden Shovel (2/14/2025)
“stable dreams,” Natalie Korman
“Every Falling,” CX Wang
“Words as Homing Pigeons Fly,” Merril D. Smith

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Rebekah 💙🏳️‍🌈 @rteller.bsky.social · 20d

Here's my offering for #PoemsAbout #SilentPlanets @thebrokenspine.co.uk @alanparrywriter.co.uk

Quiet as dirt

When I'm dead and buried
I'll hear the earth sigh
As I sleep silently
The soil hums
Inhaling with each winter
Exhaling slowly with each spring
No voice to issue complaints
A chorus only visible in
Vibrant autumn leaves
Vivid and varied
In their undying rhythm

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𝒊𝒂𝒎𝒃 ~ 𝒑𝒐𝒆𝒕𝒓𝒚 𝒔𝒆𝒆𝒏 𝒂𝒏𝒅 𝒉𝒆𝒂𝒓𝒅 @iambapoet.com · 19d

**AUDITIONS NOW OPEN TILL SEP 27**

Want three of your poems with text and recordings of you reading them to feature in popular online poetry quarterly @iambapoet.com?

You now have just 7 days to audition for your place in a wave in either 2026 or 2027.

Good luck! 🍀

iambapoet.com/audition

Audition for poetry journal iamb in Sept 2025

Audition to be part of quarterly poetry journal iamb between the 20th and 27th of September 2025.

www.iambapoet.com

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Voicemail Poems @voicemailpoems.bsky.social · 21d

“But dawn,
Because you hid behind the horizon
torches blazed, blinding,
breaking sleep and families
as parents were taken from screaming kids
to be jailed then charged then sent back to the islands

Dawn,
because you were silent,
because all murmurings were silenced.”

- @kakapowhakatoi.bsky.social

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Cindy Ana 🇳🇿 @kakapowhakatoi.bsky.social · 26d

Thanks, Rachel 🙏🏽

Cindy Ana 🇳🇿 @kakapowhakatoi.bsky.social · 26d

Thank you, Carolyn 🙏🏽

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Beth Brooke @bethbpoet.bsky.social · 27d

It’s my online launch tonight!

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Cindy Ana 🇳🇿 @kakapowhakatoi.bsky.social · 27d

whakapapa - lineage, descent, genealogy
tīpuna – ancestors
taiaha - long wooden weapon - of hard wood with one end carved and often decorated with dogs hair

Cindy Ana 🇳🇿 @kakapowhakatoi.bsky.social · 27d

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Cindy Ana 🇳🇿 @kakapowhakatoi.bsky.social · 27d

Ha! Brilliant!

Reposted by Cindy Ana 🇳🇿

Voicemail Poems @voicemailpoems.bsky.social · Sep 4

we are currently accepting submissions for our FALL 2025 issue, & we'd love to hear from you! ✨🍁✨

voicemailpoems.org/submit

🧡 deadline october 1st 🧡

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Bookshelfie @bookshelfie.bsky.social · Aug 29

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Kyla Houbolt @luaz.bsky.social · Aug 26

Another item from Becoming Altar (this one originally appeared in Dawn's Fool). Becoming Altar is coming in mid November, God willing and the creek don't rise.

Not the End
There has been a huge flood. Many people go down to the water’s edge. The water is all brown, far out to sea. To get to the shore we go along a flooded path, then a narrow rocky ledge, shaky and unstable. A fat hippie sitting on a tall rock tells me there will be another flood, a tower will fall. I see a surviving plant in a pot on top of an oil barrel. Its foliage looks like spruce needles, (but soft, not prickly like spruce) and it smells of fennel. It has a bloom at the top, a fluffy spike of many small florets, orchid/ lavender/magenta color. The plant is thriving and healthy. I am so happy to see it. I touch its soft growth.

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