Rope E-Book

Khairani Barokka

• Herausgeber: Nine Arches Press
• Kategorie: Poesie und Drama
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 40

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2017

Beschreibung

Khairani Barokka's first full poetry collection, Rope, is a spellbinding and impressive debut, kaleidoscopic in detail and richly compelling. With a meticulous artist's instinct, these finely-tuned poems ask urgent questions about our impact upon the environment, and examine carefully the fragile ties that bind our lives and our fate to our planet, our ecosystems and to our fellow humans. Sensual and ecologically attentive, Rope draws on issues of climate change, sexuality, violence, nature, desire and the body. Lush with detail, alert to its own distinct sounds, this is poetry in urgent and vivacious action - intent on finding vivid joy and hope amidst the destruction and dangers of the Anthropocene era.

Leseprobe

Rope

Rope

Khairani Barokka

ISBN: 978-1-911027-23-2

Copyright © Khairani Barokka, 2017

Cover artwork © Khairani Barokka

All rights reserved. No part of this work may be reproduced, stored or transmitted in any form or by any means, graphic, electronic, recorded or mechanical, without the prior written permission of the publisher.

Khairani Barokka has asserted her right under Section 77 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988 to be identified as the author of this work.

First published October 2017 by:

Nine Arches Press

PO Box 6269

Rugby

CV21 9NL

United Kingdom

www.ninearchespress.com

Printed in the United Kingdom by Imprint Digital

Nine Arches Press is supported using public funding by the National Lottery through Arts Council England.

for my friend k.

CONTENTS

Ciek, Siji, Bloodbrushed

Pool

climate nocturne

poem for r.

Steel, Yourself

The Closing of the Bones

conception

Escort

cutting

Meteorology

Epicdermis

To mess with the heart of a country boy

Baleen July

Sea Turtle / Penyu

Wednesday’s Child

Stupor

Lympha

Womb, REM

Duo, Loro, Oil on water

The Writer in Exile at Teatime

Bai Lan Bay

October / April

Empathy for Cathedrals

Tsunami Pilgrims

Flood Season, Jakarta

Balada Gayung / Ballad of a Water Dipper

Swimming

Letter to a Miscarried Sister

Molly Schwartz and I Have the Same Legs

Temple of Literature, Hanoi

Triptych

Secret

Poetry to Self

The length and breadth of space

Tigo, Telu, Ink on palm

Pineapple

Chéf de cuisine

Dot

Ramadhan

Baffle Roof

Rigour

Rules of Engagement

Artist Statement

Textile Display

Ragging

Sakinah

Fresco

Large Canvas

Luminous Silver #9

Sungai Di Pesisir / River on the Shore

Rope

Author’s Note

Visual description of cover

Acknowledgements

About the Author & this book

Ciek, Siji, Bloodbrushed

Pool

Stunt, little children,

seafoam light.

Backyard blues, splat

splutter.

Held breath so long,

crashwater in ears.

Friend’s father scolds.

I’d laughed.

Any small child

next to any small child

is considered its friend.

God, help.

Hold breath again.

climate nocturne

i sit on a man on the brink of love

and worry about the weather.

the bathroom light is on

and it will kill us. it will kill us

by virtue of contributing

to the whirlpool of heat

that will rise up and plunder

from the vast of wet soils,

will dry lakes of fishing,

lungs of cool air.

anxieties, insectlike,

swarming through the metropolis,

will cripple us slowly as we watch

our children drown, fry,

blizzards of fire

in the raging throat

of apocalypse.

              oh little boys, it is only 2017.

i remember: when the gross

weight of silence made way

for few vehicles in pondok indah,

when the area around the big new mall

(of three future malls) was still gross wetland

and sky, turned into a desolation of sales,

and now, now i see it, amidst shitty neon –

the tundra where he and i meet and our

memories never will, cracked universes

kept to myself, his own worlds

of past jaunts and homes, and how

we refuse to think of the future,

nor of the red past, a pact; is this

because it may be, may well be, that all

of our futures are parched –

i tire and bleed, dismount.

lie down in a nightscape studded with sirens, hear

              the metronomic hum of human breath.

poem for r.

lightning strikes the sky,

skins clean air

for women.

shows earth’s mantle:

no place

where purity lies

without danger,

cleaving,

a mouthful

of alarm,

feet gone to

thunderous

precipitate

in one dead blink,

at the drop

of a minor squall.

by the herb garden

breasts on a statue

dampen as its face

grits stone fangs

harder for protection.

horizon is droplets

of water now,

fool statue –

each ounce of

rainfall a woman.

each cloud a woman.

each ant trapped

in dirt’s refuge

a woman.

nothing exists

that did not

escape from us,

didn’t force us

to choose, quick,

what elements

soaked or dry

in forest and city,

desert and bedroom,

tundra and courthouse,

field and billow that

we as statue, raindrops,

insects, toenails,

vapour and lightning

wished to escape.

Steel, Yourself

F train comes engorging

fist-first into the belly

of the stop like blood

from warm places,

dripped on the platform

and dried. Stoop, girl.

That’s red you remember

and recognise from Friday.

You packed a jam sandwich

but won’t get to eat it now.

Just a few metres down, and

you’re holding breath solid,

suspended vision in a tunnel

of piss, no rain, no sunlight,

always three AM.

Mother’s earrings you

leave behind on the dresser

in revised historical fantasy

rattling, instead, clickety-coo

under rodents’ feet not so far from your

own persistent ankles.

The Closing of the Bones

In the houses they live in afterwards, there is the ghost