Poetry Thursday

Wednesday afternoon

my father is “having fun”
cleaning the floor
he uses the plugged in sink as a bucket
wears rags on his feet
and shimmies to a cleaning beat
he asks me to read the label
on the bottle for him
he wants our floor to shine
and laughs when (surprise)
it does
this is how I will remember him
moonwalking across our kitchen floor
rags under his feet
“that’s how my mother taught me”
he says
“but I never take any note
it takes me forty years to do what she say”

I loved the imagery in this poem. It takes me home, even if my New Zealand experience was something else.

KARLO MILA was born in Rotorua in 1974 to a Tongan father and a Pakeha mother. Karlo is an emerging poet and her poetry has been published in a small number of anthologies including Whetu Moana, Short Fuse: The Global Anthology of Fusion Poetry and Coffee and Coconuts. Karlo performs live poetry regularly in Auckland and is working on her first collection of poems. A lot of her work focuses on identity and the various negotiations of what it means to be Pacific in New Zealand.