Welcome back for Zoeglossia’s Poem of the Week Series, curated this month by Kenny Fries, award-winning author of In the Province of the Gods.
dedication
By Khairani Barokka
which noble ode to life will you attach to my bodily rhythms
which mouth open to mortality will you falsely pin to my nerves
as now you imagine patting my hairs and lifting my inner thigh
as with writing of us you feel aglow the only act left to do
as you anoint yourself with ink as holy water, that we exist: allegory
wrought in bone and difference from your sinews and stance
as clearly you’ve not researched our “nothing about us without us”
as no thought of yours has been our selves as wryly observing
gasping for air each strategy emergent in this groundswell
as though we cannot, refuse and face strife and for you
to be hashtag blessed and say you love us and say so
a stretch for the numb haze of abled, blunt certainty of superior bile
Black and white photo of an Indonesian woman with short hair, earrings, and a patterned dress, lying down on her front, pen in hand, ready to write. Photo credit: Derrick Kakembo
Khairani Barokka is a writer and artist from Jakarta, whose work has been presented in 16 countries. She is currently Researcher-in-Residence and Research Fellow at UAL's Decolonising Arts Institute, and Associate Artist at the National Centre for Writing (UK). Among her honours, she has been Modern Poetry in Translation's Inaugural Poet-in-Residence, a UNFPA Indonesian Young Leader Driving Social Change, and an NYU Tisch Departmental Fellow. Her books are Rope (Nine Arches) and Indigenous Species (Tilted Axis), and she is co-editor of Stairs and Whispers: D/deaf and Disabled Poets Write Back (Nine Arches).
Learn more at her website and follow her on Twitter.