Tuvalu

“Not another nafanua poem she can hear them say as she attempts to ride the current of her culture in the new millennium with her electric waka I’m afraid so her shadow answers back in black but this ride’s for nua’s sister the one who stayed home and fed her father koko alaisa wiping his chin and fetching the key for the cupboard holding the toilet pepa for the faleuila outside while her famous warrior sister slay the stereotypes on an oceanic scale I’m afraid so because this is the story of how her sister had to replace the stolen coconuts meant for that evening’s saka that the warrior took without asking to cover her womanhood I’m afraid so because someone had to feed the aiga harvest the kalo the bananas the pawpaw bagging them and dragging them to makeke fou to sell for kupe to pay the government school for the kids to get a scholarship up and out of here so they can come back and open a restaurant in apia and finally begin to tap into those rivulets of capitalism spilling over and into the sewers and into the streets and into the back roads of the kua back villages except for nafanua’s village someone has to tell said the shadow.”

— Selina Tusitala Marsh, ‘Not Another Nafuana Poem’, (New Zealand Electronic Text Centre)