On July 25, winners of the revamped 2020 Furphy Literary Awards were announced after more than 1000 entries were received from across Australia and overseas. Over the next few weeks, The News will publish the winners in the youth and junior short story and poetry categories. Today, we feature the winning Youth Poem by Miya Smith.
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PERSIMMONSBy Miya Smith
My family, like our house, has tan Australian skin.The driveway is a serpent’s body of dirt and dust and potholes and footprintsThe glass is blonde, receding and the roots are showingThe eucalyptus sweep the soil and seeds,Branches hunched over from curious climbing children,The bricks of our country house have weathered 30 summers.They are the colour of bushfires, sunsets, rusting fence postsOf persimmon fruitBut peel away the skin,And inside Korea spills out like a tangled sentence of Hangul characters.The kitchen is the pip with sauces and pastes with names I cannot pronounce,But can describe the tasteAs fluently as my mother can speak both tongues.There is a bowl of fruit, each with an emerald hatI take one and my mother seesBefore moved to Seoul, we lived in small country town,Persimmon – gam – trees grew everywhere.There was one in my appa’s backyard, remember that, when we visited?Fruit hung over the straw fence.My friends and me would always pick neighbour’s fruit,We’d walk through the town at night, perfectly safe.This was the 80’s, countryside, nothing to worryMy umma always said,Eat the persimmons before they fallBefore they brown and rot and buzz with fliesThe aftertaste of the fruit lingers between my teethSweet and juicy but tangy and tough.My mother’s Korea lives in our house.Peel open our family, and our mother spills out.
