Mauritian culture is too often known in the West for the dodo: an extinct, flightless bird who inhabited the island and died out during European colonisation. It is time to move forward and ensure our robust yet marginalised culture houses and projects all the diverse individual voices within it.
HAUNT (THE KOOLIE)
is poetry; a neo-Coolie meditation, exorcism of racial bigotry and satire of fear-mongering, from a decolonial Mauritian-Australian perspective.
Suburban mainstream yachts grow, giant
weeds in driveways, outlaw
gutter trophies, never seem to
Like! Find water?
But: I am Black enough to hold
the Whiteness in me
on me and @-me, account without counting
a graceless film-fade into seething light
hide colour, enlighten or die
settling, whiny-rewind VHS scores
(At Aussie, we'll save you!)