mikaeljohani

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.

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”

Ideas for Life

i stop. break the soft stem of the red flowers hanging over the toll road fence. red looks good on grey. i drink the juice that drips from the petals. my hand grey from the dust around the stem. i move on. gondoks grow like gothic ruffles on the swamp. children fish with thin bambooContinue reading “Ideas for Life”

Nots

not the puddle of black water your dunlop volleys fall into, not the cold wet between your toes for hours after you had forgotten it ever happened, not the lime green shirt-tail popping out of her olive green pants (everything else was in its right place, even the gradation of black in her hair), notContinue reading “Nots”