An Embroidery of Old Maps and New

Angela Costi

• Publisher: Spinifex Press
• Year: 2021
• Print ISBN: 9781925950243
• eBook ISBN: 9781925950250
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: Poetry
• Index: Literature

I can see how I carry Yiayia's war in the ample dunes of my belly, the moment she smelt the guns, she pinched the candle's wick, gathered the startled shadows of her children, flung my baby-mother onto her back and sprinted towards the neutral moon— Migration and the memories of women's traditions are woven throughout these poems. Angela Costi brings the world of Cyprus to Australia. Her mother encounters animosity on Melbourne's trams as Angela learns to thread words in ways that echo her grandmother's embroidery. Here are poems that sing their way across the seas and map histories.

From Bondi to Kyrenia

She watched this sea

with its loud waves

demanding the surfer

to almost fall off the board

like she did in the boat

as she stretched to catch

the last apricot

the crew member threw—

there were many hands reaching

for that taste of sunshine—

her body flung

against the boat’s spine

as Poseidon opened his mouth

expecting a feed.

Arrival

You stand in front of glass,

it opens without knocking,

they have women unarmed

sitting at counters, smiling,

“Hello, how may I help you?”

They pay people to help you.

There are words you must hold like blankets in snow

‘human rights’

‘discrimination’.

You repeat them as third language,

they feel hot on your tongue,

they make you remember a child with broken teeth,

remember a woman with torn womb,

the man eating the dirt.

Here, you can say them

again and again

to many strangers

who will take your story

like a startled baby.

In fits and starts, you come to know words

as soldiers standing at check points

‘allegation’

‘evidence’.

Your story climbs their walls and waits for you

outside their office

knowing

you cannot open the hearts of words

written as law.

Refugee Aerobics

Running feet, marching hearts, waving arms,

they jump, they queue, they plunge

and squeeze into the triangle’s longest line.

They are fed up with hunger

ready to barter their sinews and bones

for our fat and muscle.

They don’t know the moves

yet they know how to climb onto each other’s backs

to build that stack of body upon body

then get that one person at the top

to stretch beyond reach for the highest note,

hold steady when told, wait, still wait

to learn the music

before the words.

Land Mines

She tiptoed through her body,

carefully slid down the medulla

to walk like a whisper,

each step made without an explosion

brought a victor’s muffled cry.

She asked her doctor, “What war did I incubate?”

Cyprus, Afghanistan, Korea, Cambodia

40,000, 55,000 each country growing people

without arms, legs, and still they continue

to gather their wood by that roadside,

go to school on the path with the new rubber foot.

El Salvador, Vietnam, Angola, Syria

continue to work, marry, have children

cook with their elbow, write with their teeth.

A schwannoma

is built to blast injury

with five trauma triggers:

activator, fuse, charge,

a power source and a body.

“Don’t step on a frayed nerve!”

She is told there are twelve,

she has made it to the thoracic

without incident,

if she goes further to the outlying

grey swamp, branch roots,

they are there, hunched in anticipation,

she knows their tactics.

She is lucky her war is secret:

she has her clothes to hide

the scar that split her back

to deactivate bomb thirteen,

her stomach scar that cut

the blast of bomb fourteen.

She has planted warning signs:

‘Must avoid the right side’s peripheral nerves.’

Tonight, she will cook, read, go to bed

and sleep only on her left.

Heavy

I can see how I carry Yiayia’s war

in the ample dunes of my belly,

the moment she smelt the guns,

she pinched the candle’s wick,

gathered the startled shadows of her children,

flung my baby-mother onto her back

and sprinted towards the neutral moon—

that moment seeded my greed

for savaged meat, for blankets of oil

unfurled on potato and rice,

my inheritance grew by mouthfuls.

I feast on their hunger to make them proud,

so does my mother, she was spared war,

was given depression to carry

in the nerve-threaded bowls of her thighs,

arms and breasts, she reaches for the largesse

of orc...

Table of contents

• Cover
• About the Author
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Contents
• From Bondi to Kyrenia
• Notes
• Acknowledgements