Winner of the 2023 David Harold Tribe Poetry Award

Girl

          was 14 when some smart-arse
high-school boy
spat the words in her face          black          bitch

She always thought,
but never asked.

          Knew though —
something about the way an eagle wings through sky
or the river might say her name.

Who was she — my Black grandmother near 30 years gone?
girl asks.
          One Aunty says —
I don’t remember. Her mother says
she was only half. The other Aunty says
we’re nearly white.

Girl
          keeps asking — who was she?


Aunty says —
it’s not right to speak of the dead
another Aunty says —
it’s water under the bridge now.
Mother says —
          hush … hush!

Might be true. Might be half Black but
ya don’t go sayin’ it outside this house …
ya won’t get no education — won’t get no job.
Aunty says — tell ’em you’re Maltese.

Girl
becomes woman —

leaves home
goes into the world where
a white woman in a sandstone university
tells her there are

fullbloods      mixed bloods
half-castes       quadroons       octoroons

and she’s not even a fraction

just a girl with olive skin
who still gets called names
by wealthy white girls and boys
in moleskin pants and Akubra hats.

Girl
          in woman’s body
gets education, gets job.

Lives in a big city where people still ask
where do you come from?

                    What! You were born here!
Where ya people from then?

She
          drifts. Can’t settle.

Dreams about the lies she lives —
drinks —
wakes up lonely in the arms of strangers.

Thinks about the water under the bridge
where all her grandmothers’ names
might still be.

Girl
          still in woman’s body

Mother and Aunties gone now —
too early committed to the ground
stories and secrets buried
questions unanswered bounce off stars and

echo …
          echo …
                    echo …

Go back to water under the bridge.

Woman

          middle aged — life half-spent
half-lived          searching          half-complete.

If she could
she would unpick her life stitch by stitch.

If she could
she would pull names from the river.

Woman
          dreams of a girl
who once knew
that there were names in the river
that were not just water under a white man’s
bridge.

Drives home through miles of memory
to the sound of falling stars
through the space between myth and truth.

Girl
          inside woman

sits at water’s edge on the river of
her childhood

watches an eagle wing through sky

listens          to the river’s voice tell her

          we’re still here.

Waits for swallowed stories to rise up
from deep within the river’s memory
to speak unspoken names grandmothers

          above the water

into the air        onto her lips

          into her heart.