Published in Overland Issue 239 Winter 2020 · Poetry 2019 Oodgeroo Noonuccal winner: Black child Jeanine Leane Black child — born deviant from norms of western culture. Dispossessed like a refugee in a sea of white divisiveness where cognitive capabilities are measured on a colour scale according to my phenotypic reality. My Blackness — marked already by your history. So much so that you know all about me before I am even born. Black child — thwarted by ingrained white perception. My life not yet lived, but my existence already theorized by my Black skin. Black child — born already labelled — swimming from the womb against currents of conformity. Black cross in white box records my existence in the nation — statistically tracked from birth to death captive of the white square mentality. My Blackness — already confined by your colonial chains redefined by white rhetoric. Identity already ascribed from above by a raceless ruling elite. Read the rest of Overland 239 If you enjoyed this piece, buy the issue Or subscribe and receive four brilliant issues for a year Jeanine Leane Jeanine Leane belongs to the Wiradjuri people from the Murrumbidgee river. She is a poet, teacher, author and essayist who is well published in the areas of Aboriginal writing, writing difference and literary criticism. More by Jeanine Leane › 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 8 March 20248 March 2024 · Poetry POETRY Gareth Morgan as if a poem were a person, me, i get up in the morning / i buy coffee in a can, and wait / you have to keep calm, “don't get upset” / or it fucks everything up. the bosses who tell me this / are wise but stupid troopers. this is a political poem 16 February 202419 February 2024 · Poetry Two poems from 36 Ways of Writing a Vietnamese Poem Nam Le But think about the children, super cute children, mute children, with uncommonly big eyes, children with hard eyes, eyes that have seen what no child’s eyes should see, children naked as the day wearing big smiles and no smiles, preternaturally wise, with mooned-out tummies and cleft palates and cataracts, deformities and birth defects ...
