Ultimatum Orangutan

Khairani Barokka

• Publisher: Nine Arches Press
• Year: 2021
• Print ISBN:
  9781913437091
• eBook ISBN:
  9781913437107
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: Asian Poetry
• Index: Literature

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.

Ultimatum Orangutan

The original King Kong story was set on an island off Sumatra,

perhaps Nias.

So this is twisted phobia, of what-is-now-Indonesian man and fear

of his usurping of his big, hairy hands on a blonde ingénue,

on the needle of whitecapitalism, the Empire State Building.

I understand visualchimp language.

I know what KK was trying to say

in every edition of that film.

Naomi Watts may not have understood, but for years,

I was obsessed with a painting of a young, brown child

next to a monkey – by abuser Gauguin –

and have stared many hours at that monkey

as stand-in for ‘some-kind-of-brown’ masculinity;

cowed, domestic, speaking across the years,

transcending forms of visual media,

asking King Kong, softly,

‘What is this world we were drawn into.’

I’ll tell you, small animal: a world where, for decades, small children

under a red and white sigil were lullabied: women’s rights’ and labour

organisers were sadists, did unspeakable things dancing sexily in their

communist gear, killed the generals like animals – instead of being told:

generals organised a genocide of people suspected of communism likely

millions of people ended, who were simply feared of usurping

(remember, the film) rounded up for no master other than bloodthirst

(gentle artists among them) who drew their last in 1965-66. Rewind;

perhaps not ‘no master’. Ultimately, nobody’s-real-uncle-by-the-name of Sam sanctioned-slash-planned all of this to open up lands with giant forklift-

hands letting millions of bodies fall to the ground as it was all lifted into

another country entirely – people’s homes and cosmologies in rainforest,

lifted and dropped into the laps of people who cannot pronounce us,

and only the most powerful of those who can, who claim to be of us.

And so many wrestled this machinery with lives paid for for so very long,

– Marsinah at twenty-four, our many-of-stealth – but the sigil-fist.

But the red and white the red and white and blue, it caved us and caved

us and caved us. Many forced to drink from it and many said Tidak (No).

And every year G-30-S 30th September, they’d show the violent film

recreating supposed mutiny, images of blood that snapped

our childhoods in two.

When I speak to people about palm oil plantations

as devastation of Papuans, Dayak, Padang, et al,

invariably, the words ‘palm oil’ make them think

of orangutans. We need to save them. I’ve found

myself thinking ‘Orangutans, and so many peoples

as well’, but this phrase does not fit well on campaigns

against palm oil; and whenever I see a billboard

with an orangutan on it campaigning against palm oil,

I say ‘Yes’, I say ‘Is this what it takes’, and always

I say ‘And so many peoples as well.’

Is it any coincidence that King Kong’s shown up

so much with animals extinct, rising again –

Brontosaurus, Triceratops, Tyrannosaurus –

other twisted notions of the other, crafted into scales and claw?

And I think about a child so small so sad fearful to breathe

from all the blood in the air adult nightmares seeping into her sky

and her books and her friends and just now I remember being her,

am being her,

and am thinking about Donkey Kong as a Super Smash Bros character,

and what colour the thread is between the child

and the pixellated animal who pounds the earth in a piece

of electronics made with metals forged from this earth, and

all through the making of these things the monkey on screen,

the small, sad girl and the screen she refused to open her

eyes for futilely as the story would seep into the schooldays

of her and her friends, there are our words communicating to all

the sentient fellow beings who were placed on this earth

gingerly and asked to go forth in it as though this were not

a frightening thing as though this very act of going forth

did not require a shipful of warm glow around us in order

to survive and how we wish for this freight cargo every day,

creating it preserving it with oral literatures they can’t touch or feel,

with herbal medicines we try to protect from pharmaceutical gloves,

with every day a ticking towards the end of glowing, the end

of holding another who could be person who could be

old growth rainforest who could be King Kong and his tears

who could be Papuan men writing white letters on themselves

in jail, to display for their trial at which they are accused of

treason against Indonesia, that say ****** which means

****** which is what evilinsome calls goodinothers when it wants

to let us know this earth is taken in their movie of the present,

when the earth is yours it is yours yours yours dear protestors,

merauke to sabang, tears when in courtrooms, when witnessed by none,

is yours gloryhumans yours (my dear) sayang, semuanya (all),

(dear lord) ya tuhan, tanganmu (your hands) tanahmu (your earth)

milikmu (are yours). setiap hari (each day) nafas (breath)

adalah doa (is a prayer) yang mengungkapkan (which conveys)

ultimatum kami semua, persetan (ultim...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright
• 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 III II I
• 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 IV III II I
• 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 IV III II I
• 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 IV III II I
• survivor’s remorse, guilt city
• abecedarian for other alphabets
• 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