SAFDAR AHMED
Safdar Ahmed is a Sydney-based artist and creator of the Walkley Award-winning documentary web-comic Villawood: Notes from an immigration detention centre. He prefers the mediums of drawing and comics, and is currently working on a graphic novel called Still Alive, to be published by Twelve Panels Press next year.
The Cooee That Comes Back to You
us-two appear
shell thick in delicate
spring all cheek
chill nip and salt bitten
tuned to the tideline’s sheer
wash and correspondence
sublimated under waratah
sunrise nudie naturalis
we are droplets
kissed being kissed
kissed by
the tangling
untangling of deep time
inscriptions odorous
emphatic rhythms of kelp
and deconstructed mollusc
us-two
be
come
a rush
of hot air
cool air skin
hand hair mixed
mythologies and pigments
self-organised cellular
refractions microlithic
carbon kingdoms
we find our feet
and collide in the first
ow or oh or oo the first
word the first cooing
and cooee
that comes back
to you
a tumble of laughter
and pipi stories spun
within our grandmothers
as all love rolls
and drawn here
like the old fulla
whose face resembles
the trace of mouth
and brackish lip
not a line but a circuit
articulating remarkable
formations connecting coast
and mountain through sea
eagle eyes soaring awesome
in autochthonous breaths
us-two walk this track
along the shore upriver to the core
and return a thousand lifetimes
lace dry dune grass
on oyster rock
set fire to the smoky manna stuff
sipping brainstorms
from the other country
Ash Lullaby
first rain feeling
in forever folds charred
acacia season
across us
two stark animals
sooty dark and simmering hills
spit westerly ash
pissy asphalt blooms stink
the land beat black and blue
country whimpers
what has been
squandered in a scintilla
hissing industry
what tears a national legend
of supply
chain and heated ire
so swiftly
a spear pierces
the prodigal
settlement stealing stars
from the sky
what is to come
as the bullroarer
oblivion
trickles into box gum
window bushes
of the mind escape
tail end of the boom
earthshaken
us-two
born in burnt-out stump thunder
struck dreaming of coups
wake bellyaching
To What Earth We’re Heir
I see you bub
covered in bruises and cuts
wrestling with angels
who are demons
protectors who are keepers
self-loathing
sails in from time to time
as you try to catch
echoes try to catch air
and the strange estrangement
bloodletting a trail
of birth certificates
a trail of death
certificates
no trace
of birth or death
but a mention
on mission registers
unspeakable skeletons
defleshed in the closets
of godfearing forefathers
spreading the good word
across this burnt continent
it is what it is
to live another day in the colony
with the blak slapped out of us
with white whispers
telling you to host sad secrets
we were bred to fester
in our heart
shoot us for dead
then absorption
convince us to forget
who we are
bear the hurts hard
clear-headed
full of fire my love
dismantle the master’s mantra
learn what happened
here to whom
let blood-memory mend
a scar tree’s wounds
expose your vulnerability
your mask uncoming done
i’ll hold you
because true-god our truth
hurts it burns to the last
embers of your life
but it’s worth if you’re willing
to let the lucky country die
and in that death
you’ll find
wattle flood the street
we engender our own bodies
take care of the weak
without worrying
about survival
our birthright
yes bub
the day will come
when we claim
what earth we’re heir
and holiday on country
on the ruins of parliament house
and our ancestors sleep sound
home in skycamp