Ultimatum Orangutan E-Book

Khairani Barokka

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

Seitenzahl: 61

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2021

Beschreibung

Khairani Barokka's second poetry collection is an intricate exploration of colonialism and environmental injustice: her acute, interlaced language draws clear connections between colonial exploitation of fellow humans, landscapes, animals, and ecosystems. Amidst the horrifying damage that has resulted for peoples as interlinked with places, there is firm resistance. Resonant and deeply attentive, the lyricism of these poems is juxtaposed with the traumatic circumstances from which they emerge. Through these defiant, potent verses, the body—particularly the disabled body—is centred as an ecosystem in its own right. Barokka's poems are every bit as alarming, urgent and luminous as is necessary in the age of climate catastrophe as outgrowth of colonial violence.

Leseprobe

Ultimatum Orangutan

Ultimatum Orangutan

Khairani Barokka

ISBN: 978-1913437091

eISBN: 978-1913437107

Copyright © Khairani Barokka, 2021

Cover artwork: © Khairani Barokka, 2021

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 March 2021 by:

Nine Arches Press

Unit 14, Sir Frank Whittle Business Centre,

Great Central Way, Rugby.

CV21 3XH

United Kingdom

www.ninearchespress.com

Nine Arches Press is supported using public funding by Arts Council England.

Dalam Bahasa Indonesia, Ultimatum Orangutan berarti

ultimatum yang dimiliki orangutan.

Dalam Bahasa Inggris, judul ini mendeskripsikan seekor

orangutan yang didefinisikan oleh ultimatumnya.

Judul ini dalam kedua bahasa.

*

Ultimatum Orangutan means, in Indonesian, orangutan(s)’ ultimatum(s).

In English, it’s a way to describe an orangutan defined by its ultimatum(s).

The title is in both languages.

CONTENTS

Hello, Sequelae

i. natural history museum

ii. the event

in which i hypnotise a tiger

Fence and Repetition: A History of Climate Change

Terjaga IV – apocalypses

Ultimatum Orangutan

extraction rumination, in the words of the lithosphere

pylons

remaining outpost

passing lombok hills

self-portrait as fern and stolen motorcar

barmouth

Terjaga III – genocides

Eropa

mediterranean lyric

equation

situation report

antipocalyptic haiku

names for nerve damage incurred in my chest

time machine

pain speaks to okka

gives me a pass

good morning / today my body will not be your lesson

the world is stairs

soak

m.

tailings

answer

EMDR

Terjaga II – refusals

What Chani Nicholas Told Me

medusozoa, neuropathic pain

tuban planting

rest stop

anchor baby

Prep Work with Overture

Klima(k)tik

So Many Accidents

on lying down, apocalyptic

Poem (with Panic Affirmations)

Terjaga I – salvation

survivor’s remorse, guilt city

abecedarian for other languages

how to avoid oneself as a vulnerable person in a pandemic

hypothesis for apocalypse

perimeter blues

My mother calls me Srikandi

Floodlights

reverse pangaea

Horizon

epitaph

latifah

A Lexical Index

Acknowledgements

Cover Description

About the author and this book

Untuk Uwo Fatimah, Uwo Latifah, Uwo Darama,

dan Uwo Sayang.

Hello, Sequelae

Because another storm is humming,

you squat by a creek, chin out.

Tease the fringes of river intoxicant,

thumb and forefinger dunked in the wet,

breathing air that makes you a statistic.

Low to the ground, lung-filling spatter.

Pry yourself from rushing water,

face what the minnow knows,

what stoic ducks understand,

what treebanks feel as a seeping-in.

A falling outwards of equilibrium

hunts a sore chest, senses insects

leaving the grounds where you make

fast cover, temporary, walls

already so pale, so fading, ivory

as the full teeth of ghosts.

Find heat-emanating bodies,

find axe and blanket.

No hurtling yourself under tables,

you have always been so open

to skin-piercing things, there is no

safe house. In your hands

is how to seed earth.

You have always known how

to tell time by sky.

i. natural history museum

for AS

edmontosaurus, coelacanth, animatronic

hypnotists stand vigil over lone paragraph,

cocoon-wrapped, on indigenous peoples’

uncredited boon to european science. dissected

human women then throng display halls.

our feathered reptiles, mineral keychains,

armadillo taxidermy, empress arachnids,

espresso cues to purchase donation,

latin lingua franca of ancient, skewed orders,

visitors to kensington allowed to fly home

upon quiet capture by gift shops and cctv.

the key to survival is [l].

the cause of extinction is [g].

ghost orchid is wisdom, her presence skeletal.

rules all chances of escape, in the living,

from spirit preservation in transparent jars.

ii. the event

when sky-stone fell into the earth,

the smoke blackened all of celestial dome.

tree bark grew thick with scales of ash,

the heat rose, water flew, boiling ether

choked the beasts. and they collapsed

into mass graves set in this lone, blue

marble, waited in the depths as calcium.

cainozoic era begun with the largest of endings,

botany and fauna slain, punto. zeus’ grenades

slung across the cretaceous/tertiary boundary, now-

ukraine, now-mexico, now-north sea, now-west

of mumbai. and the deccan traps’ sparking ruby

volcanoes, rattling maniacally, suffocating leaves.

i sit in wonky wheelchair, museum-provided,

my friend vertical behind me. tyrannosaurus rex

moves his silly, twin forelimbs about before us,

electric strands moving his painted neck, head

aloft like a chicken’s. we missed them by too

many millions of years, we rebuilt from hunch

and stringed paths connecting phyla. preferential

choice to resurrect those with eyes, a menace

in their paws, phylum chordata. my friend will

buy me a tear-shaped stone in the shop, tinged

just like sugus orange-flavoured candy. and we’ll

lie down, discuss vile scourge that’s human

populace, apologise quietly to theropod dinos,

descendants eaten with sweet potato fries.

in which i hypnotise a tiger

not made for blake quotes and tinder profiles.

not squandered for bullets slung as attempts

at gumption. not slit with knives on colonists’

orders, then strung up. not sold to a venture

capitalist who’ll place her pale feet in heels

and on you. not vanishing. not a chipmunk-

cheeked emoji. not bedtime threat to children

in cold climates. not CGI recreation with an

underappreciated actor voicing you. not a

bevy of ill-advised tattoos. not the hangover.

not sports team embodiment. not go get ‘em.

not taxidermy. not species forgotten. not a

name used for foreplay. not a fantastic form

of balm for soothing creaking muscle tissue.

not a totem for my calming alone. not tired

and misunderstood and hiding and rotting

and gone. scream without shame or fear of

banishment. this is no forest of wounding,

tribulation, dust of your bone. lick your paws.

                                                           open your eyes.

Fence and Repetition: A History of Climate Change

Prolific, private division of land was: mass of colonists’ decision

to ink signatures, stand-in for currency, in turn for earthworm

gristle and beads. A sectioning off of home as chattel.

Minerals, mine, mellifluous thinking.

Centuries later, cows drown by the viscera of our overheated

necks, hubris recycled into saline for the salty cud of other

species. In the blink of an eye, those pale hands’ deeds burned

up, and lurching, all their many cracking curses, retaliatory,

indiscriminate, combining into earthbound rage, destructive

incentivising catalogued and recompensed with tide,

with cracked-hot soil, with goneness of the many, with refuge

sought, with gasp, with anthroposcenic kung fu, and all endings

paused before to be continued, lights snuffed out as we wait.

they say we’d all been in on it.

but the world is covered with those

against this breaking, this taking

of earth, of steward-song; covered,

with those above ground and below.

Paused before to be continued, lights snuffed out as we wait.

Sought, with gasp, with anthroposcenic kung fu, and all endings

with cracked-hot soil, with goneness of the many, with refuge

incentivising catalogued and recompensed with tide,

indiscriminate, combining into earthbound rage, destructive

up, and lurching, all their many cracking curses, retaliatory,

species. In the blink of an eye, those pale hands’ deeds burned

necks, hubris recycled into saline for the salty cud of other

centuries later, cows drown by the viscera of our overheated

minerals, mine, mellifluous thinking.

Gristle and beads. A sectioning off of home as chattel.

To ink signatures, stand-in for currency, in turn for earthworm.