Rope

Khairani Barokka

• Publisher: Nine Arches Press
• Year: 2017
• Print ISBN: 9781911027232
• eBook ISBN: 9781911027386
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: Poetry
• Index: Literature

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.

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 rev...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Dedication
• CONTENTS
• Ciek, Siji, Bloodbrushed
• Duo, Loro, Oil on water
• Tigo, Telu, Ink on palm
• Author’s Note
• Visual description of cover
• Acknowledgements
• About the Author & this book