LONTAR issue #1 (9 page)

relentless as the earthquakes that now came

one after the other. As Ruler, I was blamed.

The priests performed the ritual with a lotus
 

to the dragon
 
in the smoking mountain,

reciting prayers and waving champa joss,

then stuck them into offerings of papaya

because this rajah had become too modern,

inviting foreigners to our spice-tray table.

Accepting tribute, refusal would be rude

and fire carillons of cannons from their ships.

What could I do? We had not said No before

to Indians, Chinese or the Arab traders.

Our royal ocean barges were outmatched

by gunboats shouting off at us for show.

Every hoard of nutmeg, costing blood

was traded on to Europe, that famished ogre.

8. Patronage

I held my head up as a puppet rajah,

a cut-out figure in this modern wayang
 

hoping that the better men would come

and see us as we were—a cultured race

with music, dances, shadow puppets, sculpture.

Our wayang of poetry on the stage

may have shared its fine intelligence,

but to them our Ramayana was child's play.

I tried to fuse the last vestiges of power

into an epic dance and antique classics:

my biggest shows exerted old prestige

with flames and lights. The fire-rockets

announced my position with the people.

Yes, this was my sentimental zenith—

nurturing art and artisans: from childhood—

little girls with eye and finger mudras

had such refinement that old men wept with joy.

Therefore, every village had a stage,

an enclosure with the mask-face of each god,

hanging like a council of Time's elders.

The gifted ones, the blessed by Gods among us

breathed in the pranic blue breath of the Spirit

through deer and peacock dances, tiger hunts

with elephants on stage. The ultimate

observance was to play a hero-god,

saving Sita with a monkey army;

or going primal with a matted body—

our frightening archipelago Barong
,

awakened from our prehistoric epochs

when gods were rivers, clouds, volcano outcrops.

Such actors wore the mask with psychic skill,

fixing dragon movements in their limbs

to bless for crops, or to kill which means
protect
;

yet even they could not restrain the Ghosts

with pale skins not living in our world

who came with gunboat manners, iron muskets,

and burning lust—all ravenous for nutmeg.

9. In the Temple of the Dead

For years, I'd bought them off by selling slaves

for plantation work on Dutch Batavia.

When it was clear that no amount of swords

and elephant charges with brave warriors

could match five warships of those hard marines,

there was only one thing left for us to do:

to take the moral ground before the guns.

Actors donned their masks carved from pale
 

Hibiscus wood. Yes, it was time to show

our pride, our race, our culture and our faith

with the trance-inducing dance of the Barong.

At first, the monkeys seated on the stones

in a torso-swaying circle, move their arms

this way and that. Their ululating throats

chant to Rangda, hairy protégé of Kali,

Then, the banished queen of witches springs

into the Temple of the Dead.
 

                           
With deafening drums

she dances on the stones, hard-footed, whorish,
 

a baby-gorging goddess of revenge,

dispersing her black magic through white silk—

so all will turn their kris
blades on themselves.

But then, the Barong enters. Through stone pillars

he lunges forth with dragon fangs and claws,

lashing out with a coiled razor tail

above the front rank heads of the Dutch marines,

then spins with a final swipe of lightning

and turns the monkey bellies to dragon hide.

Drums and gamelan gongs reach their peak.

Kris blades snap on skin, and the monkeys live.

Rangda, mad and disarmed by deeper magic

disappears between the temple pillars,

goaded by the Barong and monkey troupe.

I was glad because the Dutch were sweating.

Terror is the palpable Barong
,

a rumbling from the earthquake ring of fire.

It was conjured from the guts of an epic poem,

warming us up for the crux of our rebellion.

10. Denouement

Light had already plugged the mouth of darkness

in a realm the Dutch invaders could not see.

All that was left was to sprinkle consecration:

so my High Brahmin took his jeweled kris

and stabbed his loving rajah in the heart.

My noble retinue of fifteen hundred

dressed in the finest silk embroidery,

women in sarongs with their breasts bare—

my faithful queen and family, pre-rehearsed

slashed and thrust and fell upon their blades.

From highest elders to my smallest son

all achieved through the discipline of art

an honorable death to consecrate this rite.

Our attendants, chosen for the after-tasks

stood in awe beside our fallen bodies

and helped those failing slowly reach their end

inside this torrid Theatre of the Dead.

Swimming the richer river of our blood,

we achieved apotheosis upon this earth

and left with pride and moral elevation.

10. Epilogue

My lineage has passed, yet we live on

upon the bedrock outcropping of the lookout
 

of Pelangi Mountain. We've been in stasis
 

since we spurned our bodies. Now, tourists come
 

to point out my pink fortress, once a palace,

the cairn of rocks inside the bamboo grove.

Though old art we tweak the light and stroke

each face with the breeze. We marshal gulls

as deer mince on the beach below the cliff

where the Guardian snarls upright, still fierce and strong

from dawn to dusk. Yes, we've ascended

to a higher role, managing Nature's

primal playhouse from our plane. While guides

retell my tale, we ripen pineapples

on shirts, alight the yellow butterflies

from ladies' frocks, (if they would choose to see.)

Some are moved. Most have no art now,

or sense of history, yet salutation

is still our way today: we are old souls

who bore it all and did not choose to run.

Yes, we have joined our awful Guardian.

Our home is tranquil, green—a double Heaven.

History binds me to this higher haunt

built upon a dragon's back of bones.

A suicided king can never leave, yet

Pelangi Peak stands tall and still means
rainbow
.

Sometimes, in the droplets on hibiscus

or mountain bells, you catch a glimpse of us.

Our presence breathes in pine and rock and moss.

We scrape inside the wind along the cliff,

we grow like nutmegs on the tree of life.

In the kitchen, grate our grams of sweetness,

blend pleasure in the finest gourmet dish.

Sprinkle grace with daintiness and enjoy
 

the middle brown that mixes in with all.

The Immortal Pharmacist

Ang
Si Min

Ang Si Min (Singapore) is easily identifiable as the tall one, sometimes mistaken to be male. Dabbles in linguistics, history, physics and archaeology. Terribly geeky, and frequently distracted by the conversations in her head. Dreams of traveling in a blue box. Amateur writer, long-time cross-stitcher. Intently learning human social interactions, though maybe not quite there yet.

For H—who heard my first Rabbit-on-the-Moon story

The rabbit on the moon toils
—

pounding pestle against mortar

grinding herbs and mixing medicine
—

eye drops for Er Lang Shen,

anti-flea shampoo for Sun Wu Kong,

heat stroke lotion for Houyi,

burn salve for Yen Luo Wang,

high blood pressure pills for the Eastern Sea Dragon King.

The prescription does not end.

Chang-e helps sometimes,

gathering and processing herbs
—

lingzhi, luo han guo, danggui

cinnamon, licorice, wolfberry,

mahuang, dihuang, dahuang,

ginseng, chrysanthemum, peony . . .

Yü-tu turns all of them to

pills, powders, potions.

(Mostly) alone out there on the moon,

Yü-tu wonders:

Maybe, it's time for a holiday.

Maybe, it's time to find a mate
.
 

Yü-tu shakes his head.

Such wishful thinking.

But the thoughts do not go away.

Notes (in order of appearance)

Er Lang Shen
—immortal, has a magical third eye on his forehead

Sun Wu Kong
—the legendary Monkey King

Houyi
—famous archer who shot down nine suns

Yen Luo Wang
—King of the Underworld

Eastern Sea Dragon King
—Dragon King of the Eastern Sea

Chang-e
—Houyi's wife who floated to the moon after an incident involving an immortality pill

Yü-tu
—means "Jade Rabbit" (the name of the rabbit on the moon)

Stainless Steel Nak

Bryan Thao Worra

An award-winning speculative poet, Bryan Thao Worra (Laos/USA) holds a Fellowship in Literature from the National Endowment for the Arts. A professional member of the Horror Writers Association and the Science Fiction Poetry Association, his work is taught internationally. He serves as the Creative Works Editor for the Journal of Southeast Asian American Education and Advancement. His books include
On the Other Side of the Eye
,
BARROW
, and
The Tuk Tuk Diaries: My Dinner With Cluster Bombs
. He is currently editing a forthcoming anthology of Laotian American speculative art. You can visit him online at thaoworra.blogspot.com.

Like a young monk we call "Ai,"

More slippery than a rat or some diamond dog of war

Watching bunnies clobber tigers who ate the sweet ox,

Full of havoc meant for Albuquerque or ambitious Betelgeuse,

Will you shrink into some chrome cobra, an analog anaconda

Or a steady horse boxed in on some Neo-Napoleonic animal farm

Dreaming of dynamite and tasty electric sheep black as busty Kali?

Maybe it's true people are made of monkey minds or

Aimless pig heads scowling like Beelzebub among his flies,

Watching a floating green world of cock crows and denials

Yearning for a bit of heaven, the honey of angels but not the bills,

A world that cannot be translated as we sing the blues

Well met, remembering lone and level sands, the mighty works,

A raven laughing like Prometheus, David unrepentant

Yelling for Lilith more than Rachel, more than glittering Eve

Among all of the painted pillars of wisdom in the rain

Coated in the cobwebs of a tiny orange spider with her perfect recall