Poetry
Caterina Mastroianni
Censorship
In the classroom, I fumble with the sounds
in my untutored mouth, as I read
translations from the Smartboard.
Geom-yeol in Korean I say, and I hear a giggle,
kiểm duyệt in Vietnamese and I hear a chuckle,
alraqaba in Arabic and I hear a guffaw.
One by one, my students laugh,
a rumble infects my belly,
travels into my throat, and I laugh.
I laugh at the citizenship test questions.
Multilingual words escape from our mouths,
thump against folders, dictionaries and devices.
They bounce off the shoulders of half-way citizens
and non-citizens, and against the teacher who caned me.
They circle around my syllabus-head,
straining to be English-Australian,
refusing to perform censorship,
banging against the ceiling,
knocking against the walls,
looking for an open window.
Caterina Mastroianni is a poet and educator who was raised in Port Kembla and Wollongong, on the land of the Wadi Wadi people of the Dharawal nation. She has published poetry in various literary magazines and four Australian anthologies, most recently in Live Encounters Poetry and Writing, Burrow, Mediterranean Poetry, Honeyguide, The Ekphrastic Review, Poetry for the Planet: An Anthology of Imagined Futures and Medium. She lives in Sydney on the land of the Cadigal and Wangal people of the Eora nation.