Teesta Review: A Journal of
Poetry, Volume 5, Number 2. November
2022. ISSN: 2581-7094
Nguram-bang
Wiradjuri word meaning: Home Country
My home country
is red dirt on
sweeping flat plains
the Murrumbidgee flows
through the centre
like a bloodline
it carries sacred songlines
that the white man could
never replace
Car exhaust fumes don’t choke up
the clear skies
that roll on for miles here,
only to change quietly
at night for
a blanket of stars
I swear they are
the brightest you’ll ever see
Here, crammed city apartments
noise
and pollution
are replaced by
fresh air
and staunch sisters
collecting lomandra
by the water’s edge
Country is strong
her strength is paying
homage to the ancestors
that loved and nurtured her
you can still see that now
in the clean waterways,
the heavy eucalypts that spread
their arms out to shelter,
kuracca that watch over
their voices loud from the sky
Scarred trees and
shelter trees
line the river
standing tall and strong
like matriarchs
My Nans house
is love
and laughter
bursting at the seams,
with too many bodies crammed inside
a small space,
aunties and cousins
arms and legs hanging out
the windows
Narrungdera,
red dirt country
you are my backbone
my connection to you
will always be strong
Wiradjuri country,
you are home,
where I will
forever belong
Bloodlines
“If we have children, will they be Aboriginal?”
my Irish ex-boyfriend
asks me seriously,
scrutinising my facial expression
The ignorance stuns me
what else could an
Aboriginal woman produce
if not Aboriginal children?
“What
percentage are you?”
a white woman asks me
waiting for me to
answer back with a statistic
I am silent
all the while thinking
of my Nans stories
from back home on the mission,
of dancing on the sandhills
“But you don’t look Aboriginal”
I am told in the
middle of a meeting
in my first month of working
as an “Indigenous Trainee”
My heart sinks and anger flares
as though my fair skin
isn’t the result of genocide,
assimilation,
and the white policy;
As though my skin tone
isn’t the result
of what your ancestors
did to mine
I am my country
just as my country,
culture and community
are me
those songlines,
bloodlines
run deep
Choke
I am the cliff face
of the mountains,
the uneven escarpment
that scales my
insides,
A clean
steep
drop down
into the deep
sea below,
I am no longer
filing,
smoothing,
or removing
my awaiting
jagged edges
for anyone
Genocide II
The three colours
I used to wear like armour
my hands now disown
my body recoils from
the sight of them,
the colours are now
desaturated
they feel hollow
foreign
no longer
our own
I used to march beneath you
holding you way up high
weaving you through
the streets of Yabun
on Survival Day
the sweat dripping down my back,
down the face of the sisters
standing tall
around me
I used to wear you
proudly
you gave me
my strength
on days I couldn’t
stand on my own
two feet,
but now
I no longer recognise you
there’s a stranger in my home
you are
the car besides me at the lights,
that I don’t want to look at
in the eye
Aunties are still fighting for you,
all three of you,
they’re in Parliament House
with voices raised high
and fists even higher
wanting to be heard,
but they’re not,
unsurprising given the white sheep’s
governing the top
My cousins still wear you
adorning their ears
but I can’t,
not anymore,
He chose profit
over pride
And that I will never
be able to let rest,
that I will never
be able to
decide