Karlo Mila (Karlo Mila-Schaaf) is of Tongan and Pākehā descent. She was born in Aotearoa New Zealand, grew up in Palmerston North and has lived and worked in Auckland and Tonga. Her writing first appeared in Whetu Moana, and she has since had two books of poetry published by Huia Publishers, Dream Fish Floating (2005), which won the NZSA Jessie Mackay Award for best first book at the 2006 Montana New Zealand Book Awards, and A Well Written Body (2008). Karlo regularly performs poetry live and her poetry has been featured in a number of anthologies. She is currently completing her PhD, writing a regular op-ed column for the Dominion Post and working on her first novel. Karlo is married and has two young sons.
Pālangi you call me but I am not white
I don’t know the words but I feel at peace within these walls
humming hymns in the church of Zion. I don’t see
Sisu, no. But love?
Yes, I’m not just passing time
on a slow sluggish Sunday. Here where God is Love, I feel it too.
Sisu Kalaisi is always white.
And blond most of the time
on the cheap Taiwanese tapestries Tongans love
his fair haloed image hangs from church walls
and inside homes and on graves too,
blowing in the wind his blue eyes never seem to see …
The problem with Tonga is that it is just too
small, my cousin says to me. Even if you aren’t walled
in (by brothers/mothers) there are eyes everywhere – and worse – mouths. See
they call this cousin of mine fie pālangi, ‘wanting to be white’,
with her notions of freedom she is ahead of her time.
She wants to marry for love.
An elderly aunt invites me into her fale, wallpapered in white
newspaper sheets of the Tongan Times
her house is an unintentional shrine to 8 May 1999, when the walls
were pasted anew and poverty – well read between the headlines love –
my aunt cannot tell you what happened on that day. See,
we see and we don’t see too.
But then you don’t need to know how to read in order to love
the King. An incident I chanced to see,
the King in a vaka, rowed by strong men, concentration fierce, keeping in time
wood ploughing through the water and at the walls
of the vaka swam a school of human fish, kicking up white
out of blue. Breathless but keeping up, wanting to honour their king too.
The palace is almond icing white
resting its creaking bones on a beach, cannon within its walls
this is blasted occasionally to prove a point. But see
love
of subjects is not the point most of the time.
The logic goes that a flatulent big bang commands respect (and fear too).
What am I but a Love child who seeks out an absent parent
and mostly misunderstands. She sees
me too. Tonga whispers from within the walls
of a white shell: ‘Koe ha mea fia ma‘u? Lau pisi!
Plenty time. No hurry. Ha‘u kai’ …
looking back,
do I wish I had a Tongan mother
who guarded my chastity
with a Bible in one hand
and a taufale in the other?
instead of my pale, polite pālangi mum
who gave me the freedom to choose
and understood that all the rest of the girls I knew
used tampons
do I wish I’d had a Tongan mother
who put the fear of God himself into me
so that in the heat of many moments
I’m worth more
let’s see the rock
buy me shit
and treat me like a princess
(until after we’re married
and then I’ll be your baby making
black eyed doormat)
those Tongan girls
I see them stare
see my skin half pālangi fair
I watch your nostrils flare
I see you sio lalo
I know the coconut wireless
is so efficient
that I cannot get away
with what’s actually true
let alone what is pure libel
once I thought I had a choice
and a right to choose
and I believed that ignorance
wasn’t bliss
and experience
led to wisdom
I see you sio lalo
so what, I say
I won’t wear white on my wedding day
cream suits me better anyway
I say
laughing on the outside
but on the inside
my hymen is broken
first Pacific woman judge
Once I wrote
that we are the seeds of the migrant dream
the daughters supposed to fill the promise
hope heavy on our shoulders
we stand on the broken back of physical labour
knowing the new dawn has been raided.
But
we are the seeds of a much greater dream
that goes back across oceans of memory
a vision still held in the hands
of humble men buried in humble villages
who chant clear our paths
with every lost breath.
Ida, you have spoken of the sacrifice
of language lost, and the cost,
of success in the pālangi world
and you have wrapped your son safely
in fa‘asāmoa
he rests in a nest of language
learning to tame words
that flew like wild gulls
far beyond our understanding.
‘This is the sacrifice of my generation’
you said
‘but it will not be his,
this is where the sacrifice stops.’
The gulls circle
and nest
and our sense of selves
rests.
You touch a vision
clasped to the breast
of humble women buried in humble villages
who still sing
across oceans of memory
in words that our children will be able to hear.
i am sucking on a sante bar / sneaked / bought at pak’n’save
in a cigarette gold wrapper / i remember when you bought
them in dairies / they were stripped and served undressed /
edges worn from the friction / getting down with the
brown / chocolate dust was in the air
i am watching paul holmes apologise for calling kofi annan a
darkie / darkie takes me back to
6 years old / school grounds / see-saws / we won the
war / we won the war in 1944 / mean boys alternating
between catch and kissing and sticks and stones / darkie /
tania got called blackie / golliwog / i remember being
thankful i was pretty and fair / and had long hair / no one
called me manu off playschool or darkie / i was a milk
chocolate glass and a half / half caste / caramello enough to
be safe from bitter dark accusations
tonight paul holmes apologised for calling kofi annan a
darkie / takes me back to
10 years old / sitting on my dad’s stomach / him flat on the
sofa / we’re watching a week night movie / southern
drawls and white sheets / me crying hot wet tears over
black men with hurt in their eyes / what does lynching
mean maka? / my daddy / dark / my feet dangling off his
tummy / me milky brown chocolatey sweet / wanting
to grow up and be the prime minister / or a lawyer like
matlock / make everything all right for darkies everywhere
tonight paul holmes apologised for calling kofi annan a
darkie / takes me back
15 years old / barry / surf lifesaver / washboard abs /
the mattel man / automatic winking machine / ambivalent
crush / half hate / half fetish / blonde frosting in his fringe /
darkies / that’s what he called us / hope you don’t mind
darkies / he said / setting up his mate / flirting on the phone
tonight paul holmes apologised for calling kofi annan a
darkie / takes me back
17 years old / do you think they would ever let a boonga
be prime minister / corey p / dreadlocked bob marley
wannabe / says to me / mocking laughter / he’s drunk at
three / in highbury / but we never dreamed they’d let an
indian woman be mayor of dunedin / so let’s sukhi it to
them corey p / we were darkies anonymous then / making
fun of ourselves before anyone else could / revolution in
the bottom of a bong / cutting off our veins to spite our
lives /
tonight paul holmes apologised to the nation
i am 28 / aucklander / jokes about jaffas don’t involve
māoris and minis / just another f-ing aucklander / the
p.i.’s here outnumber prejudice in wide open spaces /
skinheads low key / less closely shorn / too much rugby
league brawn / on the arms of coconuts / i’ve been told
i’m the cream rising to the top / the cream of the crop /
nesian queen / rank and file member of the chocolate
soldier movement / getting down with the brown /
tonight paul holmes apologised
sorry / he said / i’ve hurt my family / i may have hurt
yours /
yes / we scrapped in the car over it / there was yelling / by
the time we got to the end of the māngere motorway / i
was crying / who is this redneck with the big brown
shoulders sitting next me / anti pc / darker than me /
defending freedom of speech / but i don’t want it to be all
right /
/ i don’t want my kids to have stanzas of darkie memories /
sorry / paul holmes said / i could see that he meant it / i felt
sad for him / and happy / i signed the petition to say he
should get sacked / i am a manager in a govt department /
not matlock / not the pm / just a member of the chocolate
soldier movement / melting in the middle
You are my Māui-tikitiki-a-Taranga
demigod to me
trickster of the heart
I just hope I’m pulling you in
because you could slow the sun for me
Māui
you could have
every finger of my fire
but remember
I am woman
and I do not doubt
that you will die
between my legs