Politics' Corpse Covered with the Morning Paper
Someone has disappeared. But someone has shattered too. The
president is in the hospital. His hands and throat spout saws. But
the house of representatives must be rebuilt. Like building a sun
from banana leaves. Someone has disappeared. The earth pukes
up their body. Soldiers’ boots spill from their mouth. Someone has
disappeared. A corpse stink permeates the parliament building, the
kitchen too. The president must be rebuilt. The cabinet must be
rebuilt. But someone has disappeared. A politics made of saws covers
their eyes. The earth pukes. No longer can it yield plants. Someone
has shattered. The plants puke. No longer can they bear fruit. The
forest burns itself down. Buildings burn themselves down. Someone
burns, is burnt down. Someone is raped. The country is raped.
Someone has disappeared, I kidnap myself. Parliament must be
built. A student relinquishes their body before the dictator button.
Someone has disappeared! Burnt corpse. A faith that stores corpses.
Some language threatens your throat. A shattered faith. Children
can’t drink milk, can’t go to school. Books too pricey. Paddy fields no
longer bear fruit. Some volcano erupts. The people must be built.
Demos must be built. Some torture site. Bones dug from your throat.
The doors of parliament sawed open. Some sun, softly, built from
banana leaves. Come here. Listen. This country is for you. Don’t look
at me like that. I’m a corpse. A corpse of politics. I was kidnapped.
Tortured. Don’t bury me like that, like burying this country. Don’t.
Come here. Listen. This is my hand. Still warm. Like a bandage of
politics to cover your eyes. Come here. Come. Still have another
hundred years in this place, here, on this land.
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This poem was written in 1998, a time of social upheaval in Malna’s native Jakarta that saw the devastating economic effects of the 1997 financial crisis, coupled with mass social movement for democratic reform, contribute to the fall of General Suharto’s 32-year New Order military dictatorship. The poem performs the beginnings of a public reckoning with the state’s brutal repression, resonating sadly—furiously—with our present predicaments of state violence.

Daniel Owen on "Politics’ Corpse Covered with the Morning Paper"
Black-and-white headshot of Arthur SzeArthur Sze
"Acclaimed Poet Arthur Sze on Bridging Western and Chinese Traditions"

"My argument is that a culture is always growing from the margins, that the real creativity is where people are willing to take risks and make new things, whether it's with language and poems or in paintings or music. All of these endeavors connect in the human endeavor of trying to find—I'm quoting Wallace Stevens—what will suffice? What will sort of give us an existence that's meaningful and worthy?"

via PBS
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Color image of the cover to Sarah Riggs' collection, Lines
What Sparks Poetry:
Sarah Riggs on Language as Form 

"I determined each poem would be 47 lines, and the lines do not need to be connected to ones before or after, though they could be.  There would be 47 poems. The name of each poem is the date it was written.  To be in time, in the calendar, to have a project that is a book that is a series.  To feel in the momentum of it. To slant into dream, to invite that we survive through the tilt and whir of connecting synapses."
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