Dianty Ningrum reading ‘Cium’

Death smells like Jasmine 

In our land 

Most of the tea smells like death

Thus my morning tea is my smelling death

And cium is both smell and kiss

So in another word (another world)

I kiss death (I smell death) every morning

In addition to (or in lieu of) subuh

Mother taught me to cool hot tea in a wide bowl

Most privileged are those who can sit down

And wait until the tea is kind

To their tongues, the sky to their roofs

But not me, I always have to tinggal

Which means I have to stay, tinggal on my seat

But also leave, tinggalkan my tea

And both are the same to my tongue

Or else, the commuter train’s leaving

Not only me but everyone who wants nothing

But to make a meagre living

And both are the same to your tongue

I feel the world by its temperatures

The jolting heat of angkot’s carburetor on my calf

Lukewarm water of 4 a.m showers

Humid dusk when mother came home

When I gave her salim as fast as a peck

I sense the coldness of her wedding ring

the metal plate in her faux Prada bag

the back casing of her green Nokia phone

Feel how they absorbed the manufactured breeze

eight-to-five, in a room snuggled inside a factory

while mother spent days filling in numbers

and having back-to-back meetings

Or rapat, in our words

Which also mean tightly, rapat-rapat

The way she kept her drawer covered

Stashing maiden portraits and medical diagnoses

Years later I’m still smelling, mother

My sleeves reeking of warm oil and tangy liquids

My neck smuggling hints of provocative flower

Like you, I grow up to be a contradiction

I’m also still kissing, mencium everything

Yes, even the artefacts of impossible lives

A photo where you have bushy maiden hair too

Dimmed—like a beauty that never experiences itself

Glossary

Cium: kiss, smell (homophones)

Tinggal: leave, stay (homophones)

Rapat: meetings (n), tightly (a)

Subuh: Dawn prayer

Salim: Indonesian custom of greeting the elders by kissing the back of their hands or touching them with our forehead

Dianty Ningrum was born and raised in Indonesia. She recently won second place at the Oxford Brookes International Poetry Competition and was shortlisted for the Montreal International Poetry Competition. Her poems have appeared in The Scores and Australia Poetry Anthology.