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ARTS AND CULTURE

'Speak English or die'

  • 30 June 2014

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

EveningFor Nana

Like a bather by Degas but smaller,grandma sits on the hotel bed,her brown irises shadowed blue,wet grey hair dyed brown,crow's feet wrinkles like running ink,clear water drops on her bare shoulders,her hands' skin loose as fabric,language drifting away, leaves down a river,her silvered soles travelled through Myanmar,through Thailand, through Singapore, into Australia,over stone, grass, brown mud, black dirt, red dust,her longhi1 gold and covered with flowers,a soldier's photograph in her purse,her pensioner's checks spent,cooking until the end,she stares at us.

1Burmese house dress.

 

PoliticsInspired by Constantin Brâncusi's Young Bird (1928).

Songbird, our tongues are a terrainthrough which lions and rhinos

in their stubbornnessprotest. Their ancient artillery heard

by waterbirds at the edgeof opposing territories. And when we open

the dark caverns of our mouths in angerthe lateral borders of our tongues

are cataracts: beautifully dangerous,tempting as handguns.

Rage, that salivary cacophony, is a floodin which buffalos slip like children through loose sediment

necks strained for breath, blood vesselskneecaps tearing. And in this water, storks

like white doves,flee where crocodiles snap.

 

Witness

'Everyone on the bus wants to kill ya and you're gonna have to get off eventually, bitch.' — Quote from a verbally abusive racist bus attack in Australia; one of many that went viral online and made international headlines.

1Mandarin: the sea.2Tamil: starve.3Sinhala: fruit.4Arabic: nightmares.5Urdu: life.6Persian: blood.

Jake Dennis is a jazz singer and poet published in Cordite, foam:e, GORE, Lost Coast Review USA, Poetry NZ, Structo UK, Tamba, and Voiceworks. He won the 2014 Right Now: Human Rights Poetry Competition and headlines shows with Mint Jazz Band at Perth's best venues.

Angry man image from Shutterstock