after serpentwithfeet
keep me tender in cupped hands
let dust turn back to felt,
cuts beget blooming,
arias from nail-bitten mouths
you can’t take me anywhere
udah lama
let us stay here buttering dreams
in a genocidal neighborhood
keep me tender in there
keep me sleepywarm
freshly bathed as algos close in
for coin, raucousrock of death
could be any year
don’t ever tell them where i am
where you cup me quiet
and teething again
rub cajuput oil on my
miniature back,
and when they ask
what you have there say
you’re praying
Click here for PDF version.
Contributor’s Notes
‘prayer directed at x’ is inspired by serpentwithfeet’s song ‘bless ur heart’, especially the acoustic version.
Khairani Barokka is a Minang-Javanese writer and artist from Jakarta, whose work centres disability justice as anticolonial praxis. Her work has been presented widely, in over 15 countries, and work from her Annah, Infinite series of performance installations has been an Artforum Must-See. Among Okka’s honours, she was a UNFPA Indonesian Young Leader Driving Social Change, an NYU Tisch Departmental Fellow, and Modern Poetry in Translation’s Inaugural Poet-in-Residence. She is currently Associate Artist at the National Centre for Writing (UK), UK Associate Artist at Delfina Foundation, and Research Fellow at UAL’s Decolonising Arts Institute. Barokka’s books include Indigenous Species (Tilted Axis; Vietnamese translation, AJAR Press) and Stairs and Whispers: D/deaf and Disabled Poets Write Back (as co-editor; Nine Arches), Rope (Nine Arches), and her latest Ultimatum Orangutan (Nine Arches).
