It takes pulse under the swollen pearl.

Low-hanging, crouched in the green dark.

Breath fusing from fermented

heat, thickened by mangos

tumbled through witchweed.

Gentle with months

of flood, the

charcoal

earth

sculpts its mirrored eyes. When you scream like

wind whipped through crag, it clots into

skin–the buzzsaw of locusts.

Crescented bark of palm

as arms. The silver

scent of Mother

after your

sister

was

born and absence of noise clayed on ear-

drums. You are barefoot and angry

at Father, ankles rippling through

Allah’s dull exhale. In

the dim halo of

trees you ask it

what it wants.

Later,

you

will tell anyone who might listen,

anyone who might believe you,

that it showed you palms rivered

with promises. Banyan

that could bleed honey.

Jambu seeds that

would turn the

land to

groves

of stars. Mount Bromo’s charred phlegm that, when

stirred into coffee, could anchor

the sun from sleep and keep the

years from running. But first,

it wants you to bare

your mouth for it.

It wants you

to let

it

place a bow of wet leaves on your tongue.

Then a child will spring. Your spittle

its ari-ari, coarse hair

exploding from your mouth–

obsidian

geyser. You

are a

child

yourself, so at this proposal, you

laugh. It rises to rage from your

refusal. A face fractured:

egg dropped against mortar.

Between the cracks, a

viscous fluid

gleams and beads

into

your

father’s face. Again, you scream, and like

a stone thrown into still swamp, his

face billows into faces

of men you will come to

know and faces of

men not yet born.

Distant and

instant,

as

though it is both in you and beyond

trace, its form begins losing core

in a howl, edges silking.

It circles your child frame,

pulling your skin to

its toothed pant. Spirals

of hollow, high

above you.

Leaking

not

a voice or a sound but sulfur. Spelled:

My hunger will root inside your

blood. I sowed a blade too deep

to weed, but your daughters

will water it. Watch

it grow and watch

their daughters

watch it

grow.

The pit caves, cleaving night the way that

Mother halves a snake fruit shy of rot.

The fish dream in rows, their scales blinking like crushed glass. A fly grovels into the sheen film of one’s eye. This market is full of dead and dying, wearing the balmy daydream of life. You hear a goat meet a blade, its bleat abrupted by a sudden trickle. But you’re watching Ibu. Rousing the yellow back into a fan of browned bananas by squeezing their severed stems. Mid-morning, sun sporing spice from baskets of curled chili claws. You wonder who is hungry, who is full-bellied. Aja ngelirik. Ibu’s starless stare warns you. No one likes when a young girl sees too much. She reflects danger no man wants to claim. But when a body is in purgatory, observation becomes its only defense. Light, crisping the straw piled on thin tin roofs. Underneath, a murder of Dutch soldiers. A neighbor boy no older than you is demonstrating the fragrance of turmeric root.

***

One baby-faced soldier skins it like a bloated finger with his pocket knife. Gnaws on the peel, sneering. He hawks. Spit a broken yolk on dirt. He catches you watching before he catches Ibu. It’s not foreign to you, how she walks with an invisible net, crowding men. You wonder if this is why Bapak takes revenge. The soldier’s hand rests near a pistol cribbed in his leather holster. You stand still, astonished that there exists a place so cold, it turns human lids into snake bellies.

***

Both you and Ibu bow heads. She speaks in native tongue to greet him. When he cocks his head, she performs the stolen language enforced across your village. Pa-gi. You mouth the sound. It feels like a metal sphere turning in your cheek. What he says next, you can only interpret as a trespass. Ibu will never tell you. She will only explain to you what to do when a man skins you with his eyes.

***

Her hand, a slender swan neck, reaches through the mound of fruit in her basket. Pulls out the carton of kretek for Bapak. The soldier takes the tan pack from her, fingers brushing her knuckles. He shakes it, the rolled tobacco crackling like horsewhip inside. You don’t recognize it yet, but this is the look of a man who is pleased with taking something that doesn’t belong to him. Matur nuwun. His accent mocks Ibu. One by one, the soldiers shimmy out a match to strike. Light the kretek in ceremony. Watching the parchment pupae burning, they laugh out Bapak’s smoke. Your neighbor watches. The merchants watch. Everyone understands but you.

Everyone understands but you. The space between Ibu and Bapak is a cindered bridge that remains standing. This house is never still. The land where it stands is tilled with crimson. Though Ibu’s salted fish has gotten rid of the smell, you still see it. Staining the dirt floor like ruby batik as the gas lamp sways. The walls are built from Ibu’s sacrum, but it’s Bapak they wait for in the evenings. How they disguise him. While Ibu and Mbok tear banana leaves, you’re told to steep tea for him and his guest, whose kebaya is green as papaya skin. It is a gift you’ve earned with age–how to beguile ambrosia from dead leaves and pour it for Bapak to drink. You don’t look at him—or the woman beside him—as you shuffle into the sitting room. You know she’s beautiful. As are all the other bees stuck to his honeyed face. Even when he does nothing, it’s the doing of nothing that makes his presence an act of ownership. He asks her if she thinks you’re ready to marry. Dheweke bakal éndah kaya jeng Singah. Ibu’s name falls out of her throat like a felled palm. You’re not sure if beauty is what you want. Bapak has punished Ibu for hers–turning the village over to find anyone who can stand to rival it. The village men, the soldiers, all want to prune her radiance like wild sundung. You find it strange that the same malediction doesn’t befall Bapak. His beauty makes him a master without consequence. A week from now, you will pour a different woman the same liquid amber. But tonight this one will take Ibu’s side of the tikar. Bapak will slide the bamboo partition closed after Ibu touches her forehead to the back of his hand. She will hold you in another room when the walls begin to whine. You will want to ask her why. Swallowed by sleep, the question will deaden on your tongue.