Two Poems for June
To Joan (whoever you are)
[Previously published on the author’s personal blog in 2015]
When the quake of your breathing numbs your tongue,
When the likeness of your face distorts and drips
Down, and is consumed,
By the ravenous pit of your stomach,
When the acid regurgitated lines your throat,
When the smoky bile oozes
From extorted intestines,
Filling your stricken gut,
As your teeth and jaw corkscrew too tight,
And as your lungs dry-burn oxygen, too fast–
Light the gas in your cavities.
Hammer, drill, and spark.
You are firework.
You are bomb.
You are sacrificial effigy.
You are heretic,
With heart to remain
No matter how charred.
1. the sun sat at 00.00 today
[Previously published in The Idiom, Fall 2016]
cig, sag, cross
the street,
pedestrian x-ing,
forgotten, laces dragging across
stripes of ash and soot,
can’t tell the fog from the smoke or maybe
the haze of moths around an uncomfortably
bright moon, or is it
the haze of pious bodies around an uncomfortably
bright god,
neon, signs and miracles
painting electric blue the soul and blood,
painting blue the electric soul and blood,
as knees wobble,
after bread,
after wine,
after rising from the curbside altar, church
closest to the earth thirsty for rain,
closest to the soul looking for heaven,
ever awaiting the second always second every second coming
of an ever beckoning christ.
[Poet’s note: 2015. Michaelmas. It was a foggy, rainy, too late night out on the streets of Oxford. I had spent the last few hours drinking with friends at The Half Moon on Cowley, drowning some of the stress of our tutorials away—and now we were sloppily making our way back to our lodgings through the glistening, slippery streets, well after last call. Over Magdalen, down High, we were surrounded by fellow pilgrims; forlorn Uni students, local drunks, homeless folks. Some were sat on curbs. Some were sprawled out on benches. Others yet were stumbling across the deserted roads, desperately trying to keep cigarettes alight as they find their way to a bed. Or couch. Or something. Between the haze in the air half obscuring Oxford’s old and famous spires, the white highlights electrifying each and every stone on the ground, and the assortment of souls strewn about the place, I knew: this, here, between heaven’s holy water on scalps and the marks of mud on butts and soles, was the realest church on earth.]
Shalom Kristanugraha (he/they) doesn't really have much to say, but sure does have a lot of questions and impressions. Though originally from Indonesia, Shalom has lived in Michigan, Kentucky, Massachusetts, England, Montana, NYC... and has bummed too many airports and stations to count. When not bumbling around with work and school, Shalom presently enjoys cooking for other people, goofy breakdancing, and meditating on what Ruskin meant when he said that "to see clearly is poetry, prophecy and religion all in one."
