Poetry / September 2015 (Issue 29)


Born with a War Heart Called "Nostalgia"

by B.B.P. Hosmillo

—for Trisna Lewi

A couple of years later I lifted the black river to my face only to smell your reflection,
                                 it's more like an experience than an image, it's how I moved
my chemical bones to the incensed slow fire that gives birth to fossils
                          without sex. Here, time watches how everybody has lost everything.
No men hiding in the pouches of the earth. No jungle where blankets of fallen leaves
     unfold in the name of love that is sometimes, intriguingly, a synonym of country.
Here, the question of all who left that stayed: what must I do to a reflection
               whose house I certainly cannot enter but one that is mine?

My idea is not to say it's a reflection. My idea is not to say anything. My idea is not
yours, which means in front me is a door, something like abortion blood,
               something to whom I am unfamiliar.

You once said the civilized world comprehends life as dungeon of secrets.
That's why I pass by every house as if I'm not naked, I pretend I'm keeping myself
       only to myself. That when someone I don't see follows me is when I'm alive.
Staircases don't always mean a philanthropist with a box of solution waiting for you
                                                       but that something else is down there or up there.
It seems I have a choice: basement or rooftop, underground or ceiling, to drown or
                                                                     to tell the torturer where you're hiding.
I've been in all this. I'm a witness, and have I told you that I tried many times
     to forget? It's like reading a book on terror
                and of course I saw your name written in quotation, italicized, in bold and
someone with a gun imported from America asked me who is your lover? and I said
                                                                              let me read this again to be sure.
 
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