— Bless your magical hands!
She says to the one
who complains about her alcoholic husband
— Be patient with him
until he has reached his limit.
She emphatically says to another one
— There is no advantage
in a man who is a gambler
or
idle
or
addicted to hashish.
Her throaty voice follows me
when she closes the wattle door
with its usual squeak
— Come back before sunset.
Don’t attack anyone,
but if someone smacks your right cheek
offer him as many smacks
and punches as you can;
never come back to me complaining
or
crying.
At nightfall
she lets me sip from her delicious tales
of dwarves and giants
pirates and Sinbad
fairies of the woods
snakes biting like people
and witches more beautiful than mermaids
who, at harvest time
marry the young villagers
then suddenly disappear
leaving their husbands’ bones
scattered near the bindweed.
I sleep and dream about her
and about bats talking
they tell me
what happens in the world while I sleep.
Every day after her tales
I dream about her;
I sleep and dream about her.
On one suffocating morning
I am not woken
by her devout humming for us all
but
by laments!
David McComb (b.1962 d.1999)
Behind the Garages of this Country
Behind the garages of this country
there are tyres choked by grass. Sad.
But, listen, there’s
a woman behind the counter
selling petrol and road-food.
You can count on her;
Underwritten by a weariness
two thousand miles across,
limbs set to burst with dust.
She’ll be serving here
(looking out the back door
at the tinstrip toilets)
this time next year.
Still here? Still here,
bone tired, grass-stricken
Waiting for cinders or for rain
Fingering soiled loose change,
Oil and oil-grime caught
in grins, ears, frown lines, transit lanes.
Beaten by no flood
Blackened by no hopeful flame
Pay for your coffee, shed dust, then leave,
This is her wide domain.
Blessed Be
1. Blessed be
all smudge, lag and excrement found in me.
I’m grateful should my small deposit
of shed skin and tumour-worn cells
achieve grace through anonymity;
washed up as detritus grit,
mingled among beach sand,
toddlers’ shit
and the bone-granules of dead sea life.
2. Blessed be
sea urchin, starfish, anemone.
Glory to salt water that stung.
Honour to pigface, praise to
triumph of tidal residue,
to all drift-scrap dashed by spray.
All hail protean blue.
Charmaine Papertalk-Green (b.1962)
Don’t Want Me to Talk
You don’t want me to talk about
Mining or its impact on country
You don’t want me to talk about
The concept and construct of ‘whiteness’
And how dominant and real it is
You don’t want me to talk about
The art vultures here and everywhere
Modern day art missionaries
Guiding us on the great white canvas
You don’t want me to talk about
Treaties or invasion of this land
It’s a shared true history — let’s heal
You don’t want me to talk about
Past injustices, cultural cruelty, cultural genocide
It’s a shared true history — let us heal
You don’t want me to talk about
How reconciliation could be the wrong word
You don’t want me to talk about
Native titles way of moving across
The Midwest and Murchison landscape
You don’t want me to talk at all
Most of the time
You want me to nod, smile and listen
You don’t want me to talk about
How I have got a voice
And you don’t listen.
A White Australia Mindset
When do you know it has become obsolete?
When can we be certain it has become obsolete?
Take the White Australian Policy abolished on paper yet
The mindset was to keep Australia for the descendants
Of the British and to keep ‘Asians’ and ‘coloureds’ out
Prime Ministers applauded making farmers feel safe
With the stolen lands taken from the First People’s
Australia’s foundation proudly cemented
As the land of the long white nation
A mindset transferred from father to son
Ensuring it survives down the line thru time.
A White Australia mindset is not out of date
Policies, Legislations, attitudes, stereotypes
A voice screaming ‘go back where you belong’
A voice asserting ‘Hey mate whites built this country’
A voice declaring ‘this was nothing before we came’
The White Australian mindset not replaced
Not obsolete, not out of date, not disappeared
Strong Wajarri Man
His skin is fair — no argument there
Lived as a Yamaji all his life
As a strong Wajarri man
That is his world that is his clan
Though he was raised in town
This family know their connections
To kin, place, ‘country’ all around
His skin is fair — no argument there
His old people’s sweat and tears
Dropped into Wajarri land
His old people’s feet
Stirred Wajarri dust and sand
Their bones now rest
On Murchison stations out there
And they say ‘no’ to him
For Wajarri land he can’t care
Cause he not related to them
That type of reason is up in the air
His skin is fair — no argument
He is heading to 70 a winjar now
He knows his barna and clan
For he is a strong
Wajarri man
‘winja’: Wajarri word for ‘old’
‘barna’: Wajarri word for ‘land’
Blinding Loyalty
The Yamaji didn’t see it coming
Having taken over from their fathers
Working as farm hands Mullewa side
The seasonal work welcomed
Getting to drive the equipment
Preparing the land for wheat
Driving in circles and squares
Late at night and into early mornings
The extra dollars needed
These Yamaji didn’t see it coming
Over the years the equipment
Became flasher — more buttons
Control panels computerised
Farmers wanting more from the land
This was their priority — more, more, more
Local seasonal farm hands could be replaced
In fact they would be replaced — no
loyalty there
Not even a thought to train them
Just bring in outsiders to operate
Expensive equipment now
The Yamaji couldn’t see it coming
His need for work made him blind
The opportunities not great inland
His loyalty to his father’s loyalty to the farmer
Made him blind to the fact
That he was no longer needed
Sarah French (b.1963)
Boy
for my father
He was here yesterday
standing in front of the backdrop of an old army blanket
dressed as the princess in Aladdin
the sticky pink of his dress
had to be colourized in the photo
his face a pale blank
he had to sing a duet with Aladdin
a dream in duck egg blue satin
face as perfect a circle
as a compass ever drew, smile
strung like a hammock from ear to ear
they had sing a duet
If you were the only girl in the world
& I were the only boy
at the Royal Albert Orphanage
the boy who kept himself a secret
guarded by silence all his life
had to open his throat & hope
that he could follow his voice,
like an Indian rope trick — up into the rafters
& tickle those thick ribs of wood, that given enough force
his falsetto could shatter
the small square window that let in the moon.
Kevin Gillam (b.1963)
the furniture of thought
I walk through the dimness of our childhood rooms
and I touch nothing. I walk and I’m nine and
in bed watching the model Spitfire climb then
spiral earthward. I walk and the smell of the rug
in the sleepout takes me to days of rain and
plastic soldiers, nights when louvres slivered the
mopoke’s call. I walk, shifting only the furniture
of thought, and as I walk, in the folds of
Art Deco and American Bungalow and late afternoon
silence, there is plainchant, a thin vein of notes
as if someone has fused blood and music, Latin text
that sews and spells me. and these notes are father
in falsetto, these notes us, family, our Dorian joy,
major sixth intentions, flat seventh acceptance,
never medicine but a muted room, these notes are from
the fifth of us that went into that room,
stayed behind, sat still and let the loud world
pass by, then rose and left to walk into the sea
John Kinsella (b.1963)
Playing Cricket at Wheatlands
An on-drive to the boundary the ball
going on and on through dust and dirt
on and on past the shed all the way past
the chook pen and on bouncing over
bark flaked and fallen from wandoos
and on over dried twigs and branches
and chunks of quartz — rose, milky —
on and on under the loosely strung fence
on and on over the dry ploughed ground
of the ‘new’ pig yard on and on uphill
gathering speed against gravity perpetual
motion itself on and on over firebreaks
past pig melons the only green hugging
the ground in mid autumn still hot
and the blond sheen of old stubble
though behind the wicket some deeply
ploughed paddocks where brief rain
inspired prematurely and beyond
them the mysterious Needlings Hills
with granites and roos and markings
telling stories of country deeper
than survey pegs but back to the ball
which rolls on and on right over
contour banks at a tangent to the house-
dam with its velvet-rippled-baked-
mud walls and murky shallow eye
courtesy of those brief rains and on
up into the Top Bush where nest-robbers
inspired anger and bewilderment and
a children’s story starring all of us —
especially my cousin Ian (wicket-keeping)
and cousin Ken (first slip) caught ready
to take the catch when I surprised them all
by driving the ball a bit on the up but still
on and on past the demon bowler
who was probably my brother Stephen
or my uncle Gerry — on and on scattering
a flock of pink & greys scrounging
for seed on and on past a pair of crows
eyeing off the body parts of small creatures
we can’t or won’t see and on and on
into the distant purple mountain
and through the setting sun and on
into night that will fall over all
our games fall on and beyond
the farm our field of play.
Goat
Goat gone feral comes in where the fence is open
comes in and makes hay and nips the tree seedlings
through-the-bubble-of-a-spirit-level eyes it tracks
our progress and bleats again. Its Boer heritage
is scripted in its brown head, floppy basset-hound ears,
and wind-tunnelled horns, curved back for swiftness.
Boer goats merged prosaically into the feral population
to increase carcass quality. To make wild meat. Purity
cult of culling made vastly more profitable. It’s a narrative.
Goat has one hoof missing — just a stump where it kicks
and scratches its chin, back left leg hobbling, counter-
balanced on rocks. Clots of hair hang like extra legs
off its flanks. It is beast to those who’d make devil
out of it, conjure it as Pan in the frolicking growth
of the rural, an easer of their psyches when drink
and blood flow in their mouths. To us, it is Goat
who deserves to live and its ‘wanton destruction’
the ranger cites as reason for shooting on sight
looks laughable as new houses go up, as dozers
push through the bush, as goats in their pens
bred for fibre and milk and meat nibble forage
down to the roots. Goat can live and we don’t know
its whereabouts. It can live outside nationalist tropes.
Its hobble is powerful as it mounts the outcrop
and peers down the hill. Pathetic not to know
that it thinks as hard as we do, that it can loathe
and empathize. Goat tells me so. I am being literal.
It speaks to me and I am learning to hear it speak.
It knows where to find water when there’s no water
to be found — it has learned to read the land
in its own lifetime and will breed and pass its learning
on and on if it can. Goat comes down and watches
us over its shoulder, shits on the wall of the rainwater
tank — our lifeline — and hobbles off
to where it prays, where it makes art.
Nandi Chinna (b.1964)
Hydrology
Only the wading birds remember
the hydrology of the oval.
We walk our dogs, kick soccer balls,
practise golf swings across this low-lying place
where dawn mist still seeks to connect and transpire.
The lake is pressed beneath
night soil, fish bones, offal,
glass and metal, all our temporality.
Underground the tide retreats to the west.
The oval is mow
n and fertilised.
Bore holes spit rusty mnemonics
early on summer mornings
when the ibis return to probe this dampland
with their sharp beaks.
Mags Webster (b.1964)
Nights in Suburbia
Nights like these are green, they wash me in citrus,
sky dense as baize, unreadable, like your face
and the moon, a crescent of lemon, fizzing
in my glass. You say something about space,
I gag on inadequacies, they stick
to the roof of my mouth, take me once more
to my knees. I breathe pixilated air, become
crepuscular, a dust mote in a neon beam,
slowly sinking. The city is lit up like
a circuit board, it’s neutralised the stars, so there
is nothing left to look up to. Sound swabs
the silence between us, dogs hurl
their longing through locked gates, frogs
chafe the air; there is nothing more
night can offer than the promise of morning —
so ruthless, the way it happens again, again.
Morgan Yasbincek (b.1964)
the reindeer
carves a path over the snow, antennae raking
the sky, dialling time backwards, tracking north
the girl on his back watches snow crystallise
on the conifers
she is searching for a boy who has glass in his
eye, whose blood is thickening with cold
she knows for him there are no more seasons, only
ice ages in which she, all mortal, must dissolve
yet still she is carried over a huge mammalian
heart and if this muscular certainty can transport her
there is direction
snow sighs under hooves, shoulders pump
a light sweat onto the fur of his neck, as they step, breath by
breath, into a final migration
with my sister at the funeral parlor
with its carpet ticked in pink and beige,
hotel furniture, it could be a foyer, but for
our mother lying on the table
her torso prepped in white plastic, the underside
of her jaw heavily stitched from the autopsy
her hands borrow our warmth, there is
some talk, as we study her body for the last time;
the irregular bulges on her knuckles from
arthritis, her school-girl calves, the toenails we dreaded