Vinepa Aiono is a life writer, currently compiling the memoirs of early Pasifika settlers in Aotearoa New Zealand. A blogger, short-story writer, wine taster and poet, Vinepa is also working on a collection of her own poetry.
Bred on the banks
– south
of the Manukau Heads
just above
– the rim
of the Bombay Hills,
I’ve eaten the smell
of the Ōtara flea market that
reeks of fresh fruit and fried fat
that blocks the arteries and veins
of Pasifika youth
from old age.
I’ve tasted soggy chips
on a foul London winter
and craved
for my mother’s pork buns and sapasui
for Sunday lunches after church
when we would gather
at the Ōtara homestead
telling the same stories on Formica chairs
of life and pressure
on the end of
Dad’s freezing workers wages.
Not even New York’s rustle and glitz
could fade
my yearning for Manukau Pacific
for faces browned and profound
like mine, and high
on the sounds of Ardijah’s
‘time makes the wine’
I hum into the Manukau face of
creative spirit.