1. parramatta
childbirth is as bloody as war & I am
due to give birth soon. I too am being reborn
as a mother, an indian mother, an australian mother.
there are weights attached to me that drag my limbs under.
in every place I’ve been is every other place I’ve been.
we immigrants live out of boxes
in our heads even after
we’ve unpacked the ones in our garages. I was born
in a hospital south of murtala mohammed airport in lagos, but I find
traces of lagos in parramatta, where I teach when I’m
eight months pregnant. there are many of us here,
sudanese, indian, nigerian, pakistani, lebanese, iranian, malaysian,
sri lankan, filipino. my students come from homes where the parents watch
english movies with tamil subtitles & the children
watch tamil movies with english subtitles. within the older boys boils
a khoon-red rage
emasculated
by otherness, by lessness, by being labelled
for every step they take, every word they speak,
the intonations of those words, their gestures, allowed none
of the invisible liberties
white boys enjoy. within the girls & the women is a silt-dark
hunger to be, to be allowed to be, untouched & uncontained,
spoken & heard,
heard, heard, heard.
charred dust & ants in the cracks
of our mouths. our blackness, our brownness, washed
up on the sugar-white shores of a country where
the hospitals aren’t clogged like
sclerotic arteries, their tiles slick with piss & vomit,
where the people aren’t bled like cows
for sacrifice. we are seeking shelter. shelter is seeking us.
our organs grow outside of us, pumping, pulsing, vulnerable
to the knives of the questions we are asked:
where do you come from? when will you go back?
some of us have no choice but to go back. no choice but to stay.
our brothers, our sisters
in detention centres & those of us outside of them with survivors’ guilt
eating away at us like acid. we are journalists, doctors, labourers.
we are farmers whose villages burned, whose crops succumbed to
warfare & drought. we are artists who bleed onto canvases
& lovers who flee beheadings because our bodies happen to be
the same sex. we push & push, birthing a tomorrow
that never seems to arrive. an unending, wracking labour.
when I think about giving birth I consider blacktown hospital
because I live there, but am advised by my obstetrician
to opt for norwest instead. I am upper-middle-class,
with private health insurance. I can afford it,
despite the colour of my skin, despite having been born
across the seas myself, in a hospital where my mother lay
sick & haemorrhaging on an unwashed bed
& nearly did not survive me.
now, my mother puts betel leaves in my mouth
for luck. my child squirms within my belly. across
parramatta the train track stretches,
a dark vein, needle-pricked, inflamed.
there are nerves that spark between the bones of this
place, its vertebrae of concrete & eyes of glass,
the shops the smoke-filled lungs of its body
& the streets its grey-white ribs creaking under the weight
they bear. the heavy quietude of the train station at sunrise
is an unborn child, a conglomeration
of all our silenced words, our terrors, our hopes. I fall asleep
to the rhythmic clacking of that silence, my hand curled
atop my swollen abdomen.
my child, I decide, my child will speak.
translations
khoon: blood
- 115: SPACE
with A Sometimes
114: NO THEME 13
with J Toledo & C Tse
113: INVISIBLE WALLS
with A Walker & D Disney
112: TREAT
with T Dearborn
111: BABY
with S Deo & L Ferney
110: POP!
with Z Frost & B Jessen
109: NO THEME 12
with C Maling & N Rhook
108: DEDICATION
with L Patterson & L Garcia-Dolnik
107: LIMINAL
with B Li
106: OPEN
with C Lowe & J Langdon
105: NO THEME 11
with E Grills & E Stewart
104: KIN
with E Shiosaki
103: AMBLE
with E Gomez and S Gory
102: GAME
with R Green and J Maxwell
101: NO THEME 10
with J Kinsella and J Leanne
100: BROWNFACE
with W S Dunn
99: SINGAPORE
with J Ip and A Pang
97 & 98: PROPAGANDA
with M Breeze and S Groth
96: NO THEME IX
with M Gill and J Thayil
95: EARTH
with M Takolander
94: BAYT
with Z Hashem Beck
93: PEACH
with L Van, G Mouratidis, L Toong
92: NO THEME VIII
with C Gaskin
91: MONSTER
with N Curnow
90: AFRICAN DIASPORA
with S Umar
89: DOMESTIC
with N Harkin
88: TRANSQUEER
with S Barnes and Q Eades
87: DIFFICULT
with O Schwartz & H Isemonger
86: NO THEME VII
with L Gorton
85: PHILIPPINES
with Mookie L and S Lua
84: SUBURBIA
with L Brown and N O'Reilly
83: MATHEMATICS
with F Hile
82: LAND
with J Stuart and J Gibian
81: NEW CARIBBEAN
with V Lucien
80: NO THEME VI
with J Beveridge
57.1: EKPHRASTIC
with C Atherton and P Hetherington
57: CONFESSION
with K Glastonbury
56: EXPLODE
with D Disney
55.1: DALIT / INDIGENOUS
with M Chakraborty and K MacCarter
55: FUTURE MACHINES
with Bella Li
54: NO THEME V
with F Wright and O Sakr
53.0: THE END
with P Brown
52.0: TOIL
with C Jenkins
51.1: UMAMI
with L Davies and Lifted Brow
51.0: TRANSTASMAN
with B Cassidy
50.0: NO THEME IV
with J Tranter
49.1: A BRITISH / IRISH
with M Hall and S Seita
49.0: OBSOLETE
with T Ryan
48.1: CANADA
with K MacCarter and S Rhodes
48.0: CONSTRAINT
with C Wakeling
47.0: COLLABORATION
with L Armand and H Lambert
46.1: MELBOURNE
with M Farrell
46.0: NO THEME III
with F Plunkett
45.0: SILENCE
with J Owen
44.0: GONDWANALAND
with D Motion
43.1: PUMPKIN
with K MacCarter
43.0: MASQUE
with A Vickery
42.0: NO THEME II
with G Ryan
41.1: RATBAGGERY
with D Hose
41.0: TRANSPACIFIC
with J Rowe and M Nardone
40.1: INDONESIA
with K MacCarter
40.0: INTERLOCUTOR
with L Hart
39.1: GIBBERBIRD
with S Gory
39.0: JACKPOT!
with S Wagan Watson
38.0: SYDNEY
with A Lorange
37.1: NEBRASKA
with S Whalen
37.0: NO THEME!
with A Wearne
36.0: ELECTRONICA
with J Jones