Reluctant superhero eats brains for supper
I sometimes butter them with diesel / and fry them at one-hundred-eighty-degree heat / for three hundred sixty seconds. / Or boil them in freezing rose water, / pricking them till they become mushy / as I wait for the water to boil. // Of course they seek to retaliate / by shrieking the highest-pitched, / out-of-tune melody a former human can use. / So I feed them a bit of their brains / to calm them—and my ears—down. / After knowing what cooked brain tastes like, / they would shut their mouths / and never make any more sound—ever. // A sentinel accidentally made my way as a vanguard, I enjoy a bit of calmness, / approving my survival instinct’s request for a few days off / to fly to sunbathe in Bali / as a reward for its labor / while I lie still rubbing my full stomach, / surrounded by eyes watching me in awe, perhaps a bit too much. / I wonder when they will turn too, / because they seem about to— / and it’ll be pleasant to feast on those neurons in their heads / once they do. //
I told them I was a fallen angel
The trash can told the doormat, in her humblest opinion, that I kept chasing the sun. / The doormat told the Japandi-style credenza that I was burnt to a crisp for trailing the sun. / The credenza whispered to a passing cat that the sun mooched treats off me. / The cat had a steamy tea session with the mirror while telling them I kept feeding the whole solar system the highest-grade tuna cans because the world revolves around me. / I looked in the mirror and saw a hologram made of crisply burnt skin and tuna waste. // I shook my head in disbelief and decided to ride my bicycle past the lithosphere because I had enough of making a name for myself while gasping for oxygen. / I better explore the universe to find the fourth dimension / and maybe while I am playing hide and seek with moons and meteors, I would also consider exploring the nth dimension. // I went hop-hopping through interstellar space, gave some planets necklaces, and told them rings were so speed-of-year ago. / I looked for wisdom from the halo of stars, but their decipherable messages were a bit too difficult for me to comprehend. / I pedalled a bit harder, picked a Nokia from space debris, and found myself stranded in a dark matter / that was neither cold nor warm nor hot, but simply too comfortable. / I overstayed my welcome and thought of settling while using the Nokia to exchange texts with anonymous white dwarfs who thought I was a fairy. / We shared lives we never lived and found a sense of intangible companionship and camaraderie. // I already forgot both about dimensions and gravity when a degenerate star confided in me about a super-secret, super supermassive blackhole— / text of which I would soon forget as well until I drifted away in a cradle and stood before what seemed to be a super-secret, super supermassive blackhole. / I was getting sick of this dark matter anyway so I thought to myself, / “This is the end of my journey where I’ll get lost and never return,” and I hopped in— / yet what I felt was an excessively stout pull through cosmic dust. / I landed hard on earth but before I could process what happened with my bicycle, / I saw humans, birds, and fire trucks looking at me in awe. // “I have fallen from the sky,” I said and bowed, / and I heard a round of roaring applause and murmurs about angels, resurrection, and miracle. //
Jiji Lubis is a Jakarta-based journalist, columnist, and managing editor at The Conversation’s Indonesian chapter. She writes poetry to channel her after-work frustrations and prolonged mental health struggles, using it as both therapy and a medium to explore societal issues she deeply cares about.
Image: ign.com
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Heavy Feather Review 