Two Poems by Cynthia Dewi Oka

Merapi

In the clay yard of childhood, my aunt
bloodied and soot-kissed, sheds her clothes
upon the mossy lip of a well. An offering

rinsed in dawn’s coral light, the steam
rising off a fresh kill. Her hands clutch
the tar-bound rope, each vein a thick blue

knot hoisting bucket after bucket of dutiful
libation. With each drop night’s omen
returned to the lightless eye of water.

Though afraid I do not resist her
or the cry of the muezzin like a cold blade
against my skin. I want to touch them all—

burnt patches, pale worms pleating
breasts and belly, the shadowy rooms
of slaughter. How each gesture glistens

in memory like a scar. Years later
they will find her dead behind a door no one
thinks to open until the stench of rotting

flesh seeps through the brick walls.
I will not weep or fly home, burying only
that morning when small and naked

I stand with her marveling in the cool
breeze, like goddesses, exposed
beyond the avarice of beauty

as the volcano hemorrhages
its viscera above us. Tracing wrack
lines where the sun has dried

moments before we brush them away—
cicada wing on an elbow, salam leaf
on a thigh—evidence of unrequited

thirsts. Accidental drownings. The body’s
risk. Believing I am stronger than
the silence which swarms like beetles

around my heart. Clamber. Break
apart. Spill—
I do not hear the eruption when it happens.

Boiling lakes of mud and falling
timber. Bones catching fire.
The refugees we suddenly become.

Even now I tell myself I’ve escaped
the magma’s gambit; the lucky one
looking for God in the ashes.

arboretum

Swarthmore, PA

Two women beneath a weeping
cherry in full bloom. One brushes

earth with her hair, deciphering
the calligraphy of fallen petals.

The other lifts her face to sun, laced
by branch and flowers like tiny

palms of snow. Almost a postcard
of spring, who could guess

the bounty on their heads, the men
with knives behind, how they listen

for their lives in what will never
be said. Give thanks. If only today

the world is their sons rolling
down hills of grass, the boughs

bending around them like mercy.