Roots

Posted on February 1, 2022 by Sarah Hall

Ancestry denial
the root of no tree
all thieves.
I, among them scratch
the time lost debris the family tree
and it leads me to County Kilkenny
(gee)
where a certain decree
in 1367 AD
forced English settlers to
ditch the Gaelic
and return to English
language
manners
ways of riding horses.
On Kulin land
my birth place
the colonial campaign
bolsters its relentlessness
washes it green
asks Aunty to speak for five minutes before
we orate at length about
the colonial heritage of the park
where the river
giver of all life
was rediverted
forced to subsume its network of billabongs
to make way for this here
multilevel call centre.

No doubt my blood has blood on its hands.

I cop out
focus on the Irish.

Even then boredom
the only response
to this Kilkenny discovery

Are settlers allowed that luxury?

In an age of personalisation
we’ve made our own
the Great Australian Silence

turned our network of denials
into one great channel of violence.

I return to the Birrarung.

Who travelled further in life
than water?
from blood to sky and ocean
carried everywhere
the damage we did anywhere?
Well
as in life
in death
it will make kin of you
with fungi
microbes
rotting you regardless
of creed
whatever you did in your time here

making compost of your bones
growing grasses by your grave.

Posted in 104: KIN | Tagged

dust of stars

Posted on February 1, 2022 by KA Rees

you wake. your whole
body
thirsts
yourskin
is thirsty, the skin
on your face
thirsts,
and it rains
as if

you
are awindow
and rain
just
bounces
off your edges
runs

down
your pane

and you are holding
it out holding
it steady
because
in your skin
is thedust
of
stars
and the dust
is telling you that

stars
are thirsty.

Posted in 104: KIN | Tagged

H20

Posted on February 1, 2022 by Barbara Hostalek

Water has no friends when the salt sets in – surfaces dry and crusty, white and crunchy, saltpan country
Lost echoes without a lingo action asleep in slow-mo
Am I dreaming awake or am I a serpent sleeping
Alert alert
Splashes of water – make me inert
Water water for a flame that carries marries the wind, air blows and then viruses set in
A wombs warm space no place for war, but peace and quiet which tarries like Mary Margaret Marries
Where once was a river, now a museum exhibiting fish bones
Salt pan city waiting for water, waking in wind with nothing to fire
Condensation and cold
Hot air wind blows in helium balloons when allowed in
Water can be a cyclone or a Tony singing up a tornado with Harry Hurricano and Sami’s Tsunami Mangoes
Planetary star surfaces show no obvious signs of waters occupation
Starburst bangers feed closer to icebergs melting and algae blooms growing stagnant minds busting creativities imagination
Water, where did you go?
One too many fertiliser chasers to cleanse the eyes of global wealthy businessmen tailors
Waters womb a place of peace, dark and warm while Mothers feast
Never bad for bones
Drink too much hydrocephalus
Drink too little you’ll be killed and shrivelled
Salmon breeding in plastic elastic ocean flowing water pens lungs filling with micro beads lining guts of pelicans, oysters feeding on pellets of plastic and me, eating them.
Cold and freezing, chilly to the touch
Only place to go is back up

Posted in 104: KIN | Tagged

Landscape with Family

Posted on February 1, 2022 by Rita Tognini

Karri keep watch over mill town,
basin bulldozed of trees.
Rows of timber houses,
weatherboard and corrugated iron
corralled by closed-picket fences.
Gardens where weeds spread disorder.

On the dirt road
a family poses for a photo,
a triangle of togetherness.
Mother at the apex beams; Father,
crouched below her, beams harder.
Their children, at opposite angles,
complete the geometry.

The grinning boy in bomber jacket
counterbalances the girl. She tries on a smile
that doesn’t quite fit. It’s the new raincoat,
two sizes too large, empty sleeves
dangling to knees.

Karri guard the horizon,
waiting to recover their country.
A child wears a garment
big enough for grievances to grow into.

Posted in 104: KIN | Tagged

looking at a photo of my sister aged five

Posted on February 1, 2022 by Meredith Tyler

by the back door, little pink gumboots
a wind-chilled nose tip your accessory
the tiniest rose nub out of place
(brown snow slushies, dirty roads)

now you go clubbing
alcohol-pinked cheeks & hot strobe lights
push push pushing against your body.

from houses, street corners, I pick you up
headlight-reflected, sleep sitting
in your tired smile’s corners:
my brightest stop sign.

your seventeenth birthday & my surprise
pink vanilla dream cake
on top a wreath of tiny sugar roses:

they melt on your warm tongue. Behind,
another year of you dissolves into
a sunset-pinked October sky

and now the photo flat, / laptop screen-entrapped /
you look up at me and I look back
my heart squeezed between

the gap of then and now
how you have always been there,
little pink gumboots tracking muddy footprints
across my own life

even now, eight hundred kilometres apart
you sing me home

Posted in 104: KIN | Tagged

Postnatal Obeah

Posted on February 1, 2022 by Beth Merindah

We planted your naval string in a pit that your father dug,
so that every Autumn we could eat sweet figs.
We broke ground with white rum
and buried your placenta with:
the clumps of hair that fell to my feet in the shower;
psalms torn from the Bible;
bissy nuts – that would mark the small of your back;
red cloth and myrrh – to run duppies;
the curl that I cut – to hold your tongue (dumb).

The doctor prescribed Escitalopram to stop me scratching holes
in all the thoughts I had (about the things we did before),
like swimming in rainy season storms,
when the grey sea swelled into a grey sky,
and sent crocodiles down Black River. Gasping saltwater –
every breath was a prayer.
Bubble wrap lungs
burst alveoli. The sea spat back:
brackish water
black spores
horsehair
black skin swollen into a bruise.
The sea stole two boys that week –
what if that was you?

(my relief when the psychologist said
that this is post traumatic stress and not something you’ll share
not something postnatal
or viral
not some antibodies
or bad-mind
for you to suckle)

Your father’s hands dug deep into Australia.
Palms cupped and offering alms,
while blackberries snaked roots
to choke
and rot
the seeds he set in old coffee cups.
Barbs pierced the cling wrap membranes,
polyethylene spilling albumin and yolk.
His fingers scratching at coal, slate, coral bones,
earthworms fed fat on micro-plastics
– labial flesh writhing as neural tubes folded –
an unhealthy liver hue.
Your own flesh (too pale)
eyes (too blue).
Your father said it was obeah –
following us across the sea.
You folded in half, and half, and half again
until you were less of him and more of me.

He wet your roots, when he wept for what we left (his kin)
and for you (his son) untied from mother-land.
The damp earth will hold you – in dry season, in pupa, in still and dim light.
This earth will hold you – until we can carry you home.

Posted in 104: KIN | Tagged

Rip

Posted on February 1, 2022 by Riley Faulds

and i think of the dawn above augusta
sunrise obscured by cloud
our minds sliding straight to the easy distance of antarctica.

disappointment in the greyness disappears with rising birdsong
and sextants of light measure themselves against the inlet.
and i think how again again we would return
and never in that time lose touch with beauty.

you asked about mama only once. whose memory we’ve known
hasn’t been cutting-edge for a while, but whose memory
might never get better now. dementia, i repeat (as she does) dementia.

and dementia is like a slowly-opening tear in some fabric mama or grandma
might sew. the two parts of a brain, in this context at least, (those being
the past or memory and then of course the present or now) gradually separating,
quite bewilderingly it seems. the sufferer (the demented?) and those around
them (the demented) angry or really sad or even guilty. stricken by whatifs. but
that is nothing to the fear of the person with the illness. it creeps and sneaks and
then the guillotine. Mama’s handwriting decline scares her and papa tells her
no i won’t repeat it you should have written it down but she has and just
wanted clarification. or jesus you should be ashamed because i’m visiting
and have to finish cooking dinner because she has filled all the pots
but doesn’t know with what. and there is decline in overall cognitive
ability with more gaps total but the silk tears too and tears fall easy.
soon stories of memoryfamily are easier to recall than what in the name of
was i doing? but i sit with her and The Sky Runs Right Through Us by
the estuary. she, in this place of mostly memory, with focus and calm and
mirrorwater moments, constructs novel readings and says the word incongruous
with only a little time in the recall, so the present re-threads a little. she stands
and points and we yell SHIP AHOY to a catamaran cutting south and we wave
our arms and i’m a little self-conscious for less than a moment because WE LAUGH
oh we do. until the kangaroos appear with the big boomer and she is
shocked back to confusion and a little fear. and worries that she should be
cleaning or cooking so edges by the razor- reeds and steps again inside to move
papers back and forth and write shaky dinnerplans in smudged pencil.
and i feel the sting of memory also, of when i would tease aunty j, mama’s
sister, who had alzheimer’s. she was ten years older than mama and the
family brought her over from Melbourne when she was diagnosed. she
would come to birthdays or Christmas from her (fancy but bleach-scented
nonetheless) nursing home and we’d give presents. i’d say happy birthday
many times and she would always reply is it my birthday? and the
table would chuckle but also tell me to stop. and i wish i had. because for
aunty j the rip was widening and the two minds splitting such that she
remembered the names of her Melbourne cats but not her carers and,
suddenly, not even Mama. because she didn’t know her as this dignified
silver-haired old lady, but only then as a child and young woman
in photographs she was shown to remind her that i’m rosemary don’t
you remember? and then she had a stroke and her minds tore
entirely, and Mama’s a little more. and dementia is such that,
eventually, it’s all (and less) past and no now.

Posted in 104: KIN | Tagged

upon returning

Posted on February 1, 2022 by Rodney Cross

I am not of this place
and yet, I keep returning

we spoke of the past
but I do not lay claim to it

how can one know
that of which
they do not belong

we spoke of the past
and I held it in my hand

seventeen centuries it lay
deep
in
the
ploughed
and furrowed
Earth
a tool
a utensil
a weapon

awe of history
and respect for the crushing
weight of time

brought us to the brink
of unbidden tears

I am not of this place
and yet, I sigh in relief
upon returning

Posted in 104: KIN | Tagged

Sister, I Should Have Greeted You, with Hongi

Posted on February 1, 2022 by Maraea Rakuraku
What is this place?





a can’t believe it’s true?
a couldn’t have really happened?

I di e died here.
I di e dead here

a something horrendous?
a something unspeakable?


Hear that?

Rumbling downunder.
Thundering upover.

Feel that?

Quake. Quaking. Wake. Waking.

Anyone else finding it hard to breathe?

breath sharing breath

sharing breath

breath

breathe


This, is something else.
Something else, this is.
reaching to, a reaching from, a reaching from, a reaching to, reaching foward, reaching back

s t r e t c h i n g



re mber re e y e ember mem ry rem ber remem re memory remember remember

Layered upon
upon
upon



Yes, yes. It’s a University now.
What was it before?


Awaking. A waking.
Awakening.
A w a k e n.


I’m desperate to ask someone who’ll know.
Shit, out of luck in this tomb of a place.
I’m desperate to see someone who’ll know.
Mana whenua e, kai hea koutou? Kai hea tatou ma? 2

Aglow with the faces of her mob, a Sister Lands.


E te tuahine3, what is this place? a can’t believe
it’s true? a couldn’t have really happened, a
something horrendous? a something
unspeakable?

Ka mate nga tangata whenua i kōnei ne ha?4

Our stories the same but, not. Our stories the same. But. Not. Our stories the same. But. Not.
whisper, whispering whispers whisper, whispering whispers whisper, whispering whispers

love, loving the loves.
sad, sadding the sads.

whisper, whispering whispers, whispering whispers, whispering whispers, whispering.

ears trembling with song.
mouth trembling with sing.

bones jangling, jangle em bones

here/there / there/ here/ here/ hear
every where



Sista, do you really want to know?
Tell me.

The walls of this building is mixed with the bones of the Original Peoples of this Land. The
walls of this building is mixed with the bones of the Original Peoples of this Land. The walls
of this building is mixed with the bones of the Original Peoples of this Land. The walls of this
building is mixed with the bones of the Original Peoples of this Land. The walls of this
building is mixed with the bones of the Original Peoples of this Land. The walls of this
building is mixed with the bones of the Original Peoples of this Land. The walls of this build.




Walls. Building. Bones. Peoples.
Building. Bones. Peoples.
Bones. Peoples.
Peoples bones.




And. We’ve. Been. Eating. In. Here.




here/ here
everywhere

OurstoriesthesamebutnotOurstoriesthesamebutnotOurstoriesthesamebutnotOurStoriesthesa

Straya’s always nek level
me. Not. Ourstoriesthesame. Not. Ourstoriesthesame. Not. Our stories the same. Not. Our
Fair go, Kiwi’s no diff’rent mate.

Storiesthesame. Our Stories the same.
Our. Stories. The.
Same.

Auē! Auē! Taukiri ē! 5




Sister, I should have greeted you, Sister, I should have greeted you,
with hongi. with hongi.




Sister. You did.




Sister, I should have greeted
you with hongi.




















My Sister. We did



















1https://teara.govt.nz/en/photograph/39856/the-hongi. Authors note: Is not restricted to formal occasions.
2People of this land, where are you? Where is everyone?
3Sister.
4The peoples of this land died here, didn’t they?
5An exclamation of lament.

Posted in 104: KIN | Tagged

Extracts

Posted on February 1, 2022 by Suzi Mezei

Under clammy loam past the roots
of Bodhi trees, in a place the ancestors
named Colombo
lie the bones from which
we came, you and I. Think of the mariner gone
two centuries, stowed in the damp of someone else’s
gouged earth, landlocked for eternity,
the owners of the place where he disembarked
hurling dirt
on the change he’d brought, gathered like dark pillars
on the fringe
of a Christian burial for a tragic Billy Budd,
our great, great, great, etcetera, all bravado
and natural curiosity, a genealogist’s conundrum;
his legend mocks documentation, his archaic sextant
condemned to a musty life in the sea-bitten tea chest
that adorns your mantlepiece, a salt-damaged relic of
expired wanderlust. Think of his marrow, small red specks
dotting the verdant fringe of Negombo, the nucleotides
that grew our generations. Imagine our long-expired grandmothers
who landed swan-necked, vulnerable as seabirds on the docks,
to marry, to cobble nests among the jam fruit trees, to dodge
cobras; the scrape of coral reef on merchant hulls, their rite
of passage. Unmoored now, we roll like egret eggs,
you and I, in different directions,
far from the sea;
the art of navigation sunk within, dormant, unfathomable,
the distance between us, vast.

Posted in 104: KIN | Tagged

trajectory

Posted on February 1, 2022 by Hellai Gul

lots of histories
some that made it to her story
trickle
trickle
trick
le
she holds up the hems of her skirt to collect the moods of her ancestors

she loses her brother to a missile that hits the sunroom
a piece of it lodged in her calf

she weds a man she loves
lives the life she’s been taught dreaming of easy days

she fills the pockets of my pink snow coat with nuts and dry fruit
almonds to keep you warm

she swallows the rock in her throat at the airport waiting for answers
her home and her people on the other side of earth

she attends her mother’s funeral via long distance calls
her grief sticking to the walls of the home she’s built on stolen land

she dreams of her mother picking an onion out of her breast
the biopsy disagrees and the chemo takes her eyebrows

she forces her hand to sign divorce papers while her children hold her weeping body
she must live days made up of her fears

i’m weary after another battle with chemicals set off by the memory in my body
she makes me mantoo
noshe jaan jiggeram

Posted in 104: KIN | Tagged

COLLECTIVE MEMORY

Posted on February 1, 2022 by Shaine Melrose

History is coiled in my cells
from this land, land beyond sea
black loch, coarse heather, farmed croft, a wooden boat.
German burial of an Australian airman
jack boots and red segments of flag
emptiness absorbs Bealiba station.
In my blood, claimed land stolen by an imperial greed
a shredded testament
dust of the First People, rocks and sheep
fleece of prosperity, wild river, dwindling bush.
Coastal salt spray of Port Melbourne
oily rainbows, red bricks, sheet metal, passing ships.
Tradesman, minister, the glitter
of sapphire, diamond and gold rings.
New Hebrides mid-wife, missionary.
Seymour, droplets of the Goulbourn River.
I am the dead, the dying.

Gippsland, Moe, a village in France
sawn wood, hammer, handmade squares and plane
living in a tent, generations before I was born
the fire that razed their house, plentiful bush.
Great grandfather walking into the dam
his damage flowing from grandmother to mother to me.
Running creek past the dairy, her cows
and paddocks, orchids picked, passing train
memories my mother no longer can retrieve.
My history jagged fragments.
I am the living, from the silence I speak.

Posted in 104: KIN | Tagged

Odoriferous Diorama

Posted on February 1, 2022 by Lisa Collyer
A plastic garlic bulb is on display in the museum as an ethnic contribution to our state. Plastic covered sofas reserved for special guests in my Father’s Zia’s parlour. We sit on them once upon arrival but now congregate familiar around the Formica table. The plastic cloves are indivisible now that southern Europeans are considered white. Restrictive quotas that once separated north from south, now tolerate warm tones. A plastic garlic, the colour of milk fat on the cappuccino strip, umbrellas waft, papery skins lift, the sea breeze ventilates alfresco dining. I should be grateful for the assimilation of the plastic artefact.

Zia – Italian for auntie

Posted in 104: KIN | Tagged

the story from the plane

Posted on February 1, 2022 by Kristen Roberts

climbing

At first, below, it’s just bush,
the coarse darkness of unreckoned terrain.
This the history of all stories,
or the breath between them
where new ones are framed.

cruising altitude
The scrub falters at the bounds of farmland,
snags against the smooth tapestry of horticulture
where the seeds of urban backstories are sown.
Page after page of cultivation is drawn,
a study in fluid verdancy with small-town geometries
etched in juxtaposition. Here,
where narratives meet and plots begin to change,
a highway staples the scene like the spine of a picture book.

mild turbulence
Mountains rear and a river spills, mercurial
in the virgin light, leaking through the folds
so it seems each valley holds shards of the sky.
A glimpse of our shadow reveals two narratives concurrent,
context and plot-point aligned, until cloud blooms
and we can no longer read the land.
The disconnect is unsettling, focus narrowing on narrator,
but when sunlight glints on the wing of another plane,
I realise the clouds are full of people;
that the sky, too, is woven with tales.

descent

We breach the cloud floor
and are summoned by green. This is home,
the land, not a conclusion but a remembering
that while our stories may not all fit the same pages,
they are all being written on the same country.

Posted in 104: KIN | Tagged

Memory of Sounds

Posted on February 1, 2022 by Joanna George
I remember the rattle of the dry leaves, crisp in summer wake, the moans of the gushy winds, making love to the reeds of bamboos over the streams of grassy meadows in the December winters. The thunders and leaps of rains deafening, reminding the monsoons of June. sounds of seasons different, marking the tiny village of Chellarcovil, where I lived, straining my ears, To the coos of birds many, flapping their wings long and wide meows of the household cats, ramping around in search of fish innards thrown, few hens, those survive the predative neighbors and animals other moos of the cows reminding milking and bleats of goats, suggesting food. A jeep selling fish, from fresh waters, sometimes bikes replace with their horns same occasional bicycles that bought Uncle Jon ice creams and Italian Delights. The northern survivors with blankets heavy and bright pink Panjumuttaiyis ringing bells! Ah! The sounds of that village where I drowned my childhood, remains vivid and alive brimming with details minute tickling my senses, sonorous.

Here, in the city streets of Chennai where I reside planting few seeds for future, I know few sounds branding the difference. Early mornings, a bicycle peddles, selling ‘idiyappams’, which my grandmother made effortlessly. He taking long breaths, between, idi and appam, gulping the grammar of merging. The tailor, with his machine on wheels, rolling over the roads, following a cry sound of ‘eup-eup’, he calls out to the mistresses of the apartments, for their mystic appearances. Then, few vendors who mend sofa, stove, the menders who follow the tailors, the buyers of silk, the worshippers of Sai Baba (Saturday special) marking their morning routines. So much of mending to be done in the morning, stitching the void open wounds of a homeland belonging. Afternoon and the balmy evenings witness no vendors much, occasional bicycle walas and northern survivors selling clothes, they don’t ring bells, they never shout either, like how us – the re-habited city dwellers move in quietness to our apartments. By late evening, the man on his bicycle returns with his idiyappams, closing the curtains of the day, for a sweet night’s sleep. All through summer, winter, monsoon like the warmth, that forgets to leave in this heat trapped city, these sounds stay, on roll, yearlong, reminding us what we miss! And to belong to either of the places, I failed, I know! to belong, the ultimate quest, to requite I guess.

Posted in 104: KIN | Tagged

the midwife

Posted on February 1, 2022 by Nadia Rhook

in a tent pitched in a corner of the deck
you lit wax candles
soaked sponges with liquor
infused hot water with chamomile and hartshorn
pointed her to the stool
held it still while she
squatted and her
baby, through gravity, dropped, slimy, into your hands

ignoring the burn playing in the space between warmth and
fire travelling along your inner
wrist, you listened to her eyes, lifted water to her lips, pressed
sponge to brow for

centuries, back on land, you’d answered to the church letting them
know if any mother had killed their child or
conducted a heathen ritual with their placenta

here, far from surveillance and steeples, you
helped my ancestors
return to what the doctor called
a ‘natural state of good health’1 as if

nature might be separate from knowledge from
sponge from tendon

1Dr. Bland, quoted in Sian Rees, The Floating Brothel, p.176.

Posted in 104: KIN | Tagged

Second home- Sasural (in-laws house)

Posted on February 1, 2022 by Madhvi Singh Thakur

A woman moves in-between homes
homes that own her.
Her body is not
even her own
Home.

My body
Once upon a time before me and my sister’s time
love was an arrangement
The men of my family
were wedded to their land
before they married their wives.
While my mother, grandmother and the mothers before them
were wedded to an endless motherhood.

“You have a mother’s body”
they told us everyday
So learn to care
learn to nourish
practice everyday
to pour your love in others vessel.

He’ll build a house for you
brick by brick
the walls are to be painted by you
your kids will call it home.
Together you’ll save them.

But you alone will mother them,
The house, the husband and the kids.

Because “you have a mother’s body”
It’s always someone’s home.

Posted in 104: KIN | Tagged

Big Boy Yarns

Posted on February 1, 2022 by Jaquim Duggan

In the backseat
of the lime green holden gemini
I sat in just my undies, pudgy pale
flesh folding under sunny skies
with the windows rolled down
in January school holidays.

Mum told me about the mission,
being Kamilaroi,
her mums siblings,
the girls school
and the blood shed
and all she knew.

When I’m older
details fill in gaps,
explicit pain piles
events contextualised
and deeds left by dead
turn into hell
no time can
heal over
hour long
phone call crises between
city and Country.

Posted in 104: KIN | Tagged

Mami Wata

Posted on February 1, 2022 by N'gadie Roberts

I used to visit her
in her cottage by the sea;
my grandmother.
She spun silky stories
of a creature some had seen
and one that swam in streams.

It spoke in storms,
a spirit of the ages
cast away
into sunken seas.

Seal coat
night eyes,
ancient foe in amorous disguise.

There was always a golden comb
in her hands –
those brown, leathery hands
hands
the colour of mahogany,
and palms
palms as white as the shells on the shore.

Beware, my child,
of that creature on the rocks;
when tides ride low
she combs her locks.

Take heed, my child
of that creature on the rocks,
luring Freetown’s fishermen
from their docks.

And if my child, you must seek land
beware of the one that extends his hand.

I never saw that creature on the rocks
but I could always feel it
dwelling
in the crevices of my memory.

Posted in 104: KIN | Tagged

Toast

Posted on February 1, 2022 by Svetlana Sterlin

Vegemite on toast is what the locals eat around here.
not sure we can call ourselves that, with our lack
of pantry. a few shelves of Home Brand basics:
my childhood. sometimes news in the morning.

toast is what my father started eating as dessert
when he could afford a toaster. a luxury, he
called it. guess that’s why it was dessert. Мама
would never touch it. she used to visit the Russian

supermarket when it was still open. guess it’s not
needed anymore. i remember the store in Melbourne
where Папа used to buy me глазированный сырки. don’t Google
Translate that. doesn’t sound too appetising in English.

toast is what we became when Папа lost his job
some years later. by then all the Русские supermarkets had
been declared redundant, like him. guess we’re expected to
assimilate. forget our old comforts and eat Vegemite

on toast. last month Мама cried when her friend
sent us a box brimming with Русские sweets. i sat alone
in the corner nibbling on toast. Мама told me to speak,
to smile. the dry crust scraped my throat tongueless.

Posted in 104: KIN | Tagged

On the eve of All Hallow’s Eve

Posted on February 1, 2022 by Anne Casey

We sit together in a biting wind
at Sydney Cove
while you talk of thin places
and we agree
that this is one of those—

filled with the spirits of your people
who had lived here for millennia
and my people who had come
and gone

I say
Tugaim ómós do do sheanóirí a bhí
agus atá ann fós
my words carried on
the bitter breeze
in my native tongue
that was torn from my people
along with our true names,
stories, songs—
one in every three
of my people perishing
during our own
enslavement on a farflung coast

From my lips to the ears
of your ancients
I implore
as
we sit together
in a biting wind at Sydney Cove
while you talk of thin places
and we agree
that this is one of those

Tugaim ómós do do sheanóirí a bhí agus atá ann fós means ‘I give tribute to your elders who were and who are here still’ in the
Irish language (Gaeilge).

Posted in 104: KIN | Tagged

statement

Posted on February 1, 2022 by Grace Ugamay Dulawan

I am trying to get back to the womb
where I was cradled before I was civilised

before I was civilised
I had a song sung freely

a song sung freely
and without tremor

without tremor or
the thought to be ashamed

to be ashamed of
my clothless voice

my clothless voice we
didn’t know enough to not

enough to not be
as we were: woundless

woundless we were
in the womb

in the womb
before we were civilized

now the wound is a kind of womb

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Clutter

Posted on February 1, 2022 by Olivia Slater

Precious little things
Collated treasures
Curated bundles of dusty leaves
Wood and clay
Stones and shells
Dried flowers and feathers
Nestled between plants and baskets

These aren’t trinkets
Or knickknacks
Or junk
They’re domestic altars
Tiny shelf temples
Priceless pieces of memory
From where her heart goes when she’s tired

Ready to fill a few blue biscuit tins
Labelled and left behind when she is no more
Solitary inheritances
Lonely little legacies

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Tasseography

Posted on February 1, 2022 by Leila Lois

For my Dapir

She holds the teacup to her lips,
gold-rimmed, a protective eye of tea leaves,
cardamom swirling, a caldera
of hidden depths; divination in the debris.

Honey-drenched, rose-scented,
stories run through my mind like sepia,
her voice dark like tea as it steeps.
Her face is cast bronze by a veil of light
shining through the lace curtains.

She cries into the brew, tells of her troubled eyes a
reckoning of tears. What her eyes have witnessed.

There are quiet moments like these,
where tea soothes and there is nothing left to do
but to listen, sit, sip together,
watch mountains bloom and tides change
in our teacups.

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