no story
The twoheaded monkey stops her daughter on the stairs of the Borobudur.
When she blinks, four pupils still dilate the girl into view.
Her lips move as if she is about to speak
of the Goddess undo, who grows hybrids of tulips and orchids,
sends wingclipped cockatoos North in summer,
and floats papayas in salty musselshells;
of Indo, who is golden jethaired,
a blue-and-brown-eyed twoheaded woman,
looking East and West
into herself
to weave children
from the hole in her stomach,
which envelopes absent eggs;
of Indo, whose Nederlands and Bahassa tongues
twist simultaneously
into one muted knot
until sharp echoes
cut off her babies’ ears
before she conceives them
(they will have told of their slender mother
when she is found twirling between cold and warm aircurrents
that fill her vacant belly with blank memories);
of Indo, whose blue eyes only see her other brown eyes,
and whose four pupils become two tracks
toward her own black cosmos.
But she says nothing, bites her lip,
and pulls her daughter up the monument stairs.
She looks back to see the distorted animal
motionless at the foot of the steps.
