Three poems

ALI COBBY ECKERMANN

Ali Cobby Eckermann’s first collection 'little bit long time was written in the desert and launched her literary career in 2009. In 2013 Ali toured Ireland as Australian Poetry Ambassador and won the Kenneth Slessor Prize for Poetry and Book Of The Year (NSW) for Ruby Moonlight, a massacre verse novel. In 2014 Ali was the inaugural recipient of the Tungkunungka Pintyanthi Fellowship at Adelaide Writers Week, and the first Aboriginal Australian writer to attend the International Writing Program at University of Iowa. In 2017 Ali received a Windham Campbell Award for Poetry from Yale University USA and was awarded a Literature Fellowship by the Australian Council for the Arts in 2018. Ali was granted a Civitella Ranieri Fellowship in Italy in 2019 and is currently an Adjunct Professor at RMIT Melbourne.

Copyright is retained by the author.

(KURU WARU) BUSHFIRES EYES

There are bushfires burning in my eyes

I am burning down the modern world

I am burning your invasion of me

I am burning the image of you

You are all burning on my pyre

I am burning your prejudice of me

I am burning your paternalism

I am burning your policies

I am burning your excuses

I am burning your greed

I am burning your lack of understanding

I am burning your refusal to acknowledge that

I am burning your insults and beratings

I am burning your reaction to this poem

There are bushfires burning in my eyes

My Mother the land is crying

My Mother is crying with beauty

My Mother is crying with sadness

I am crying for all my mothers

We are crying for our land

Our tears are embers unable to quell

There has been no lull in you

There will be no lull in me

I am burning down the modern world

There are bushfires burning in my eyes

THERE IS A VOID

there is a void inside of me, a cavern

filled with water stilled by time

when the solstice arrives drops of sunlight

seep in, mostly the void is dark

forgotten even in the whispers of the aged

the void is inside me, the imprint

of my children whom I did not raise

who were whisked away, the pain

of their birth dulled by the pain of their removal

(and) my body exhausted does not respond

to the anger inside my mouth

an anger that rises from maternity

centuries of childbirth adhered to nature

I am the experiment, the other

trait of sensibility, the unnatural

I have become domestic, domesticated

and you ride me like a horse

tugging my head from side to side

the reins in your hands bleed

the words in my mouth to silence

my eyes fill with fear, careful to watch

my every step so as not to jolt you

forcing you to punish me

as I have not been punished enough

the void is inside me

my retreat even from myself

I have retreated from the natural world

dead inside, dead in a bottle of booze

liquid that soothes, running over

scarred ridges inside my mouth, scarred

by your hands, your responsibility of me

and my responsibility to self

waits

BLACK DEATHS IN CUSTODY

Despite the cost a new jail has been built

It seems the incarceration rates are trebling

I only came here in the role

Of a Deaths In Custody inspector

All the cells are stark and spotless

Blank screens watch from the corner

The offices have the highest technology

The faces of the staff all look the same

When I walk down this wing and peer

Into this filthy room the door slams behind me

The feeling in my heart is changing

From a proud strength to fear

All the stories I have ever heard

Stand silent in the space beside me –

A coil of rope is being pushed

Under the door of this cell