Published 9 April 202111 May 2021 · Poetry / Friday Poetry / Main Posts Poetry | Coeval Mona Zahra Attamimi A response to the Stradanus engraving of the Discovery of America, 1587 And you thought you had stumbled into paradise — the word virgin on your lips, blind to the giant kapok’s ancient life. Your arrival has disturbed my dreaming, frightening the anteater who’s been searching for worms all day. Leave Amerigo, we are not a discovery. I lie in my hammock, in my nakedness, my nipples facing the sun. You cannot vanquish our bodies, conquer our sky. Long before your god heard your infant scream, our world has been unfolding. Long before your dead walked across ice plains, five cycles of our ancestors had traced the arc of the Sun, mapped the constellation of the Seven Sisters, traded with the Aruacs and the warriors of the sea, and held fire with the Imams of Manden Kurufaba. Ah, now I see you steering your attention to the left where an old mother sits by a cliff…no, you are mistaken, if you think she is roasting a man’s leg. If you think we eat our own, it must be because you often chew on the flesh of young girls. You cannot remain here, robed and armed, holding a cross, boated with a crew of men who are frothing at the mouth at the sight of my tattoos. We have names for loam, roots, seeds and the odour of petun. We have names for the gates of the After-Life, for tears, for bones and the air we breathe. So leave and do not fix your Latin on our skins, our crops and our land. Amerigo, take your flags, pennons, killing tools and language far from here. Here, the seabeds are made of deep gold you cannot grasp. So leave. Leave before history engraves your footprints on the souls of the unborn and wounds the hearts of our diviners. My hallucinations, last night, of blood and limbs splattered on the vines of the manchineels, were warnings to my people. Leave before the fathers and the husbands find you here and before they adorn your brain with wild orchids, bird feathers, to give you an exotic death. Leave and let the pit vipers and marmosets work their earth. The capuchins squealed, and my kinfolks were squeamish when they saw you in the water, wading through tides, cutting through thick ocean-mist — they thought you were a ghost disguised as a white god. One day your children will burn our healers, brutalise our forests, if you do not remove your feet from our shores. The mountains and the rivers must inherit our children, while yours, if you leave now, will inherit a stream of good fortune. Tomorrow smells. Your hands reek of savagery. Your water-vehicles will be stained in the blood of manacled ankles. Have I moved you, Amerigo? Are you mouthing the words— fero, veteris, inscius, simplex — as you gaze at us? Do you not know of humanity? There will be no earth after you are done with us. Fero – savage; Veteris – primitive; Inscius – ignorant; Simplex –simple Mona Zahra Attamimi Mona Zahra Attamimi is Arab-Indonesian. She lived as a child in Jakarta, Washington DC and Manila, before settling in Sydney at age nine. Her poems have appeared in Southerly, Meanjin, Cordite, Westerly and Contemporary Asian Australian Poets Anthology. She was the recipient of the Asia Link Arts 2019 Creative Exchange in Bandung, Indonesia. Currently, she lives in Sydney, working on her first poetry collection. More by Mona Zahra Attamimi › Overland is a not-for-profit magazine with a proud history of supporting writers, and publishing ideas and voices often excluded from other places. If you like this piece, or support Overland’s work in general, please subscribe or donate. Related articles & Essays First published in Overland Issue 228 24 November 202324 November 2023 · Friday Poetry Poem with vertical viewfinder Shari Kocher If in future an image of mine— of course, I have made the if-ness of your looking a multiple Ferris wheel turned to trolley car trundling down the street. Damn, I will show you something all right here, inside the daily or what you call private. First published in Overland Issue 228 10 November 202311 November 2023 · Subscriberthon 2023 On the final day of Subscriberthon, Overland’s most important members get to have their say Editorial Team BORIS A quick guide to another year of Overland, from your trusty feline, Boris. I liked the ginger cat story, though it made my human cry. I liked the talking cat, too, but I’m definitely in the “not wasting my time learning to talk” camp. But reading is good. And writing is fun, though it’s been challenging […]