Transcriber: Toka Ahmed Reviewer: Sebastian Betti
Hello. The first poem I’m going to share with all of you
is an answer to a question my mom asked me when I was in an abusive relationship.
Anisa, what’s wrong? What’s wrong? What’s wrong?
And I didn't know how to explain that I felt like I was being eaten alive.
So this first poem is called Knife and Fork.
I dislocate my spine.
And I use my bones as cutlery.
I use a knife and a fork,
to cut my trauma into little pieces
that my body can digest.
I tuck the skin of the girl I used to be into my collar.
Your kindness is a crumb.
So I savour it.
Like the last meal, love will prepare for me.
You taste like
Silence. And sea salt.
Your cruelty is a vegetable.
But I'm convinced that it is good for me, so I stomach it.
And then I wait
for a dessert that will make
all of these hospital trips worth it.
My body is a burning restaurant.
My heart is a waiter that refuses to stop taking orders,
even after the nurse inserts pipes into my veins.
I justify the consumption of everything, the burnt intensions,
the uncooked apologies, the rotten forever’s that begin to mould.
I eat and I eat and I eat because
I think that your cruelty will make me stronger.
But after two weeks in hospital, my doctor doesn’t seem to agree.
I justify the consumption of everything.
But the truth, it's too hard
for my teeth to chew through that if someone loves you,
they would never hurt you.
But my intestines are a rope that pulled you back every time you left.
My intuition tells me to eat my vegetables.
That's why I can no longer trust.
I try to swallow this thought
by drinking faith, but when I reach for my glass,
there never seems to be enough. So I am left.
Choking at the dinner table.
Thank you.
My mum wanted to move my family to the most accepting
and multicultural part of Australia grew up in Rockhampton.
And growing up in Rockhampton, as a child,
because I didn't look like the kids around me, I almost felt I felt unseen.
And this next poem I'm going to share is my journey from being
unseen to finally looking at my reflection.
My body is like a television.
And my existence is a channel that I never really had the remote control to.
I was always click,
changing to survive, click Rockhampton and Brisbane,
how the remote control to who I was.
My existence was welcome back to today.
Tonight we are crossing live to a resident in Rockhampton.
To hear more click.
My mother asked me if I was getting bullied
and I wanted to say that my skin is a house,
but I feel like the world around me has handed me an eviction notice.
I wanted to say that love is a form of currency,
but I can’t pay the rent because ...
because I hate myself,
I'm not sure if I hate me,
because I hate me or I hate me because they hate me
and they never said it, but I can see it in their ... click,
Welcome back to the cooking channel.
As you can see here, we have a bunch of ingredients.
Slice your accent into bite sized pieces like at the lime at the grocery store.
Ask your mother not to speak any longer than digesting kiss.
Anyone realises that your click. Welcome back to The Weather Channel.
As you can see here, there’s a slight chance of rain.
Use this water to scrub in scrub just to see if your black skin will ever wash.
Click. It never does, click. Welcome back to the sports channel.
Look at her, go and go and go and click.
I had a theory that if I was fast enough, I could outrun an idea.
On your marks, get set,
I'd be gone before their racism could ever catch up to me.
If I was smarter, if I was faster, if I was better, click.
Don’t like what you see in the mirror,
dial the number at bottom of the screen
to order our newest addition of skin bleaching cream sulphate package
sold separately.
Click. I’m sitting it while Go Road State Primary School.
My friend asks me
if I’ve ever considered
what I would look like,
if I was white.
She places her hands on my cheeks and says.
Anisa, you would be so beautiful.
It’s such a shame.
And this is where I was born in a hospital,
where my reflection was a diagnosis, my big lips and wide nose,
symptoms to an illness I didn’t know how to cure.
I was born in the “Allah Akbar”.
But the praise I made to God that if you're out there,
please put me in someone else's body,
click my buddy was a television changing and changing.
I changed my hair, my skin, my voice.
And so my existence became a channel
that the world around me could stand to watch. I was an actor.
Playing a version of myself that was different to that little girl
who got off the plane to Rockhampton.
And if you see that girl,
she’s looking for the woman she’s going to become.
Ask her to call me.
My number is 0 4 2 4. Click.
Thank you.