the toddy tappers

Posted on February 1, 2022 by Indrani Perera

it’s been years since my father
called Galle home
since sepalika flowers
bloomed in the night
and stole into his dreams
with their scent
only to carpet his path
in the morning
with their petals

years since the toddy tappers
climbed the coconut palms
and lowered the clay pots every morning
years since he walked to school
with his brothers in pressed shorts
crisp white shirts and black ties
and poked holes in the pots
then stood underneath to drink
the fermenting coconut nectar
more of it ending up
on my father’s shirt
than in his mouth

now he tastes the frost of a Canberra winter
sometimes snow, always cold
minus eight degrees celsius over night
creeps into his shoulder
and makes it ache and creak with
a longing for the tropics
and the warmth of monsoon
rain on his face

Posted in 104: KIN | Tagged

hereditary

Posted on February 1, 2022 by Niki David

brown girl sweat runs in my blood

amla stained bathroom sinks, floor-length acrylics, and Sunday morning pooja

this civil liberty was never hereditary

my proclamation of womanhood was stolen before I could speak

my hair oiled, and my skin bleached (I untaught myself)

they tried to snatch me, pull me by my piggy tails

but this muddy hand bitch was too slick

so now before they take my akka I am yelling for her before me

her red sari is too quick for me

jaggery! thick sweet jaggery drips from her teeth

amou, amor I have a confession to make

I still suck my thumb when ama braids generations of strength into my scalp

I still whimper and whisper when the glass cracks a little too close to my feet

I still scream when I close my eyes and the guillotine of girlhood snaps

I’m still thinking about the summer

thieving and scheming under the sun

my gods are pleased with my dishonesty

my Durban aunty is always yelling at my loose hands

‘DONT TURN YOU BACK ON THE STOVE’

lessons of mixed masalas ingrained in the backs of my burns

garlic and onion first, grind, no thyme, mix don’t stir,

my heart has lived in too many cities

so, I hope this village shit will lead me on

my objectification will end in my glory

Posted in 104: KIN | Tagged

Drift

Posted on February 1, 2022 by Kate Maxwell

Stretched your tubular tendrils out
from square of earth, you call home
it’s nutrient lode of love
shading boughs, entwining
clutch of too close ivy
and become airborne.

Thrill of cool air, glow of variegated
leaves, before unseen
now floating in your undetermined
drift. Soft fall into foreign soil
that for a while, feels supple
sliding at your sides, such different grain

and oh, the fecund thrum of colours
swaying sun-worshippers
so reed thin and elegant, all pulsing
in the heady scent and thud
of chlorophyll
coursing through your core.

And yes, you shed a little
parch in too bright sun
don’t drink enough water
but briny breeze, new field of friends
and a springtime of freedom
means you hardly feel your feet.

You’re not evergreen, after all.
Surely, meant to seed and stretch
beyond immovable old roots.
Slowly, though, you start to understand
the end: this wane’s not
mere fallow sleep of winter

no new seasons here but scorch and shine
sucking life from lungs of earth
so, you shoot out desperate fingers
into dirt which faster friends already fled
and see your haven: loamy, loose
and shallow–

blossoms blown to cultivate the new.
Wilted, wistful for the rich embrace
of home, you cling, frantic
with the ragged scrub
of other weedy regrets
and wait a stronger wind.

Posted in 104: KIN | Tagged

Ghosts

Posted on February 1, 2022 by Gabriella Munoz

They asked me once
what it was like to have no blood connections known
no sadness or loneliness shared
no cousins, no aunties, no mother, no father
to have prayed to the wrong ancestor most of my life
Oh, how people like to assume
asume lo peor siempre que es mejor, the man who raised me used to say
but he was wrong they are wrong

*

When the man who raised me died
the tiny bones he had buried in our home garden remained
there was the white Boxer dog who welcomed me back home from school every day
the grey cat always too scared of my childhood games
the unborn sister I named Alice
and, oh, how many secrets we shared
how many games we played
ugly ducklings
apple-poisoned princesses
Thumbelina rescued by a blue bird
Hansel & Gretel trying to find a home our home
the road marked with empty snail shells
we got lost, but we found it
nuestro hogar
Large windows and stone walls
blue carpets and the scent of mould
The white dog rests in its garden
the cat basks in the sun
the ghost of the unborn five-month-old smiles
bones the length of a banana mixed with the remains of childhood dreams
My dreams los sueños de la casa
overseen by the ghost of the elderly woman who called herself my grandmother
She died there in one of those rooms with blue carpets
She didn’t look peaceful, her eyes scared until a gentle hand closed them
Abuela chosen ancestor
smoking Marlboro reds from the window of the room where she died
waving to her yerno – the one who died too soon
the one who brought me to her and told her I needed a limpia and
a home arms to hold me
an abuela to feed me
Did my birth mother ever feed me?
[when I meet her ghost … when I meet her ghost]

*

Five lonely ghosts remembered by adopted kin
They travel every year
Así de la tierra de los muertos
y compartimos historias
y el perro blanco me lame las heridas
y el gato se enconde bajo la cama de mi hijo
Abuela and I smoke Marlboros
Alice plays with my daughter’s hair
my father asks for forgiveness
most secrets are too heavy to be turned into ashes

*

New apartment buildings now cover the bones of an unborn girl and two pets
A man’s and his suegra’s ashes share the space at a church that no one ever visits
Their secrets covered in dust
But who will visit my ashes?
Spread them instead
Take some to my dog and unborn sister but don’t scare the cat
leave some next to papá and abuela
throw the rest to the sea
allí, flotando un mar de ancestros

Posted in 104: KIN | Tagged

Second Skin

Posted on February 1, 2022 by Tais Rose Wae

When I talk about the
heartbeat
I am talking about that rise and fall
– pregnant with wisdom –

the crest and cavern
that carries us, belonging
to the backbone
that birthed us,
the river red gum
sapped and scared
where bark was stripped

to cradle
salt / seed / snake /
found fruit and other food,
or water otherwise waded through
at high tide.

It is the landscape library,
or what to them
is arid land,
the terra that their cheek and tongue trip over,
their nullius which is to us
our sentient second skin,
mapped
on fingertip
and carried by lip.

Posted in 104: KIN | Tagged

Root Fire

Posted on February 1, 2022 by Evlin DuBose

Silver gums shiver in the gold sun,
rivers cracking redly in their deep
Blossom birds in wilden roars
now howling while they sing—

Nature tells us what it means
There’s none in thieved inheritance—
Rending, cleave and break the word,
unholy in our being, but

We are not native—we are
too far and lost from Mother—
Many mothers across the sea
saw nothing sacred in this country

And after war our embers flee
aground in earthen blazes—
Brewing flames, infernal veins
and soon, we’ll blacken trees

Posted in 104: KIN | Tagged

network

Posted on February 1, 2022 by Kathryn Gledhill-Tucker

shadows form veins across the earth
stretch outwards expand dissipate
into soft permeable spectres
a colourless friend reflected
hopeful
one day you will shed a branch
or leaf
watch it fall and meet at the intersection of your feet

a mycelial network sits
substrate beneath the city
like a hivemind of live-wired trains
speak hunger
transmit food

fungi plug themselves into the network
of delicate lacework
and symbiotic aunts

Posted in 104: KIN | Tagged

Molly

Posted on February 1, 2022 by Gillian O'Shaughnessy

I’ve heard when you drown it feels peaceful

Like floating in the womb

In a homespun shroud of blue water.

You found another way

Far from the sea, the salted shallows

The paperbark trees that lined the tracks like a church

And the skeletons of cuttlefish you carved into stories

With your fingernails.

Stranded in the red dirt

Under a sky so high and wide

When it yawned, it swallowed you whole

You curled up small

Sank into those endless plains of nothing

Turned your face to the dust

And ate what you could.

It hurts less each time, you told your daughter as a comfort

Slips down your throat like a fresh-shucked oyster

You don’t even notice the taste after a while.

There’s nothing in our archives

Only your first name, a quiet imprint

Among the faded cascade of blood ties

The women in our family

Lost or unspoken

Washed away in the tide of our men.

Posted in 104: KIN | Tagged

Queendom

Posted on February 1, 2022 by Julienne Maui Mangawang
In a woman’s hands did I meet God branching into ancestors who sung beneath trees, sat among waterfalls, journeyed towards a mountain’s peak, and whispered a message to the wind. They asked her to visit a place her great grandparents forgot in the ruin of rice fields and bamboo huts.

She saw stories in a pot of tomatoes finally in fruition, the first offering after generations of destruction – the beating of the flesh, a subduing by men who cultivated customs taken from different lands.

Women, she met, taught her how to be still. To break open in daylight. To tap into a reservoir of pain repressed by a dam of generations laid like stones. What life can she have when they are released?

One day, she will wake up to a child kissing her forehead, a stillness she has known in a garden revived, and a harvest to nourish descendants walking out of her. They will learn the message she brought out in poems.

Her hands would have collected more lines in climbing trees, soaking in rivers and waterfalls, and scaling mountains. She will close her eyes and meet ancestors in the cold:

Welcome home.

Posted in 104: KIN | Tagged

Connected

Posted on February 1, 2022 by Nola Gregory

Wounds that run so deep
They cause our spirit to bleed
It hurts more than life itself
Leaves us struggling to barely breathe
There’s this place deep down within
I want to reach inside there
To that darkened place
To let it out and lay it all bare

It has been lifeless and dormant
For over 100 years
Our hidden life story
Full of heartache and fear
But a call out of the blue
Sheds some much needed light
As we wade through family history
We have been given new insight

Like the pieces in a jigsaw
They all seemed to fit
And the feeling was indescribable
But we savoured every memorable bit
When the truth came to light
It drenched us in lost history
As we connected with family
Solving a 100-year mystery

Now my spirit is alight
And there’s fire in my soul
I feel it burning inside me
Protecting me, keeping me whole
I finally belong somewhere
It’s a dream come true
Being connected to lost family
Was our greatest breakthrough

Posted in 104: KIN | Tagged

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.

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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

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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.

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