The Lorena Letters

By Dorothea Rosa Herliany
Translated by Mona Zahra Attamimi.

have you still kept that knife?

don’t rinse off the blood.  i still can hear that sweet groan.

you wrote in the pages of the book of love. late at nights, we’d read

the instant our raging blood boiled and gushed together

with hurried, impatient breath.

you take pleasure in being defenceless.

just like the fish that you’ve kept inside your womb -

flailing about within the pulverising strength of desire

and, the mysterious and delicate moans of your opened mouth.

have you still kept that knife?

before you arrive at the height of love, thousands of women

will unsheathe and stab you with it - wherever at the pit

of your body and on any congealed meat. 

2000

Click here to listen to Dorothea Rosa Herliany reading this poem in Indonesian on Lyrikline.org.