When Hana Schmidt said Samoans in New Zealand need to be majorly humbled

thank you lord for sending the palagi girls

                into the cubicle with metal walls

                to take turns stomping

                on my brown 

                bread and butter sandwich before

                i knelt on concrete floor with

                a shoe on my back

                cleaning the mess I made

                flushing that shit away

                        and thank you for growing the gorse

                        bush by the school footpath for

                        the other shit sandwiches

                                also that we ran

                                out of shit sandwiches

thank you lord for sending the palagi girls

            onto the jungle gym to take

            fistfuls of my ugly hair

            in turns shaking out kutis

            half castes hide

            in their frizz when they’re 5,

            6, 8 etc etc

                        also for growing up the palagi girls

                        to be great

                        hairdressers, happy to cut

                        and sweep my ugly 

                        away for my 16 year old pay

thank you lord for sending the palagi girls

            in lines and assemblies

            long fingernails

            and sharp bites

            to cleanse me of my skin

            scars remind me

            afakasi brown is a Christ-like red

            it seems i saved leftovers

            for our own kind

            to cut

Lisa Stanley (samoan/pākehā) is an emerging writer based in Tāmaki Makaurau. Her work appears in a fine line, Flash Frontier, Turbine / Kapohau, Yellow Lamp Poetry, takahē, Landfall Tauraka, and elsewhere. 

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