mikaeljohani

Jakarta

Sitor Situmorang (for Sumantri) I am a swamp Heat blurs the white walls Everything has a meaning, man and malaria.

Taufiq Ismail That night we were sitting on the balcony, the moon was up Traffic was loud, bleating and roaring outside Cables spread like hair between telegraph poles We tried to make out the black outlines of the night A becak hummed on asphalt, crossed a ditch Then suddenly in the sky, a brightContinue reading “Risjwijk 17”

Tram

Mh. Rustandi Kartakusuma The tram screams&screams! barks!&snakes along the river. I don’t care anymore a man’s making faces at me on the other side of the banks. I’ve run out of breath Going against the current of morning traffic. A pickpocket went for my wallet and I’m sweating, like a horse. All for nothing?Continue reading “Tram”

News from the front of the Secretary of State office

Taufiq Ismail Once his body has been stretchered Hurriedly Out We sing ‘Leaves are Falling’ Slowly A soldier Takes off his beret and wipes Tears none of us can hold back At the top of the Gajatri A flag hangs limp Behind it: a roll of clouds

Going for a Jog in Menteng: One Morning

Toeti Heraty Ah, morning jogs in in the city no need for a map, won’t do me any good— they’ve changed the names of the streets again. they’ll soon run out of names of war heroes streets and alleys, the veins of the city messages and promises that never go anywhere, aortas passingContinue reading “Going for a Jog in Menteng: One Morning”

Song for a Good-Hearted Woman Before Her Fiftieth Birthday

Toeti Heraty A motel in Kampung Bali a little upmarket, the sign says “Wisma” a woman nearly fifty, waiting for his lover inside a room, three-thousand rupiah a night. Stuffy. The ceiling fan’s broken again grey mold inside the bathtub, but the water is clean. Yellow plastic ladle, blue bedsheet, grimes on the wallContinue reading “Song for a Good-Hearted Woman Before Her Fiftieth Birthday”

Rigmarole

“Sepanjang malam, Pesta!” White wall long cracks like my grandmother’s hair No one needs a riot. like veins like dead snakes. The wind carries everything, my maid said.

Strikethrough

under the fly-over: a policeman sits cross-legged on a thin bench balanced by two boys playing cards at the other end. sometimes, patience is just a game you play while you wait. and wait. then the black river starts. little ships of plastic aqua glasses float fast—all the captains had jumped the lifeboats—on its surface.Continue reading “Strikethrough”

there’s a hole in the sky and it keeps getting bigger

it’s like this: outside ak.sa.ra. drizzle pavement a family of seasonal scavengers lebaran aqua glasses a balita girl in a peasant dress a conduit for the electricity of the earth a brown plastic makeshift roof the cart the traffic a sick-looking grey tree the storm

Speed of Lite

but i stop, my hands clasped tight on the back of a plastic chair, my feet burning criss-cross dunlop pattern into the wet earth, and my mind takes overexposed pictures of a man asleep, or is he dying?, on a kerb with the smell of dead rats and yesterday’s bananas, a girl vomiting just-digested friedContinue reading “Speed of Lite”