the sound from here

by Nadia Rhook

 

over there

colonisation sounds like business

 

I can hear money tinkling

Got change? Yeah, nufor a latte anyways

 

from the universe-ity it’s

empires, eroding my ears, by overlapping waves

Si, me encanta este ciudad

But y’now she’s got issues like the rest of them

 

but from here

colonisation is quiet

 

squatting on my front porch

the Dandenongs are mountain ranging

children dart up this path on bikes

I hear them scoot away

the trickle of water on a spongy garden bed

 

in an arrangement, signed & unspoken, we

rent this place and water the roses when we remember

 

from this porch settler colonialism sounds easy

like suburbia

 

the question, not how can that be? but

how long til it sounds different

 

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Nadia Rhook lectures and researches history at Latrobe University, on the Wurundjeri land of the Kulin nations. Her PhD explored the aural dimensions of migration and colonialism in Melbourne. She’s concerned with the decolonisation of language(s), and is co-curating a heritage exhibition, ‘Moving Tongues: language and difference in 1890s Melbourne’, to show in October 2016.