Of A Coin
Wendy Alexander (University of Newcastle, Australia)
.
.
On my land
weather and time
exhume an arc of bronze,
on its face a Persian king.
On my land by Tanami
Persian currency has a tale to tell.
1860: Afghan traders trudge camels
into a sheet metal sky.
Padded hooves spin silk
through a seamless Hindu Kush,
down a treacherous moonscape
across oceans, to here,
where woven colours
drown in a desert winds;
madder, henna, indigo.
Here I sit and whinge
my sandy outpost,
like none have whinged before.
Now jolted, I sit
with metal pressing
a century and more through time.
Out here, alone,
displaced from its home,
sliced from its provenance.
At night, by satellite
I see Afghan faces
despair
in a desert.
Is it my desert?
They are:
Oh-so-different.
So alone, I lean close
and scrape my face
on a razor-wire ridgeline –
Woomera
wraps their breath.
A man with hair in tendrils
passes manna through the fence
and runs to lie complicit,
a saltbush just one hide.
Frame by frame:
I lose my way
in the pits of sorrow
that stow below all eyes.
I see copper wire
blanket-stitching
lips
together.
I finger this coin
and shiver;
its metal edges
cutting the pink
from my fingertips.
.
.
Wendy is a postgrad in creative writing at the University of Newcastle, Australia. Her poetry and short stories have won awards, and she is working on a novel of journey through 1890s Australia exploring the slippery relationship between time and travel and stories told / not told.
