Aung Aan Suu Kyi’s Pseudo Ex-boyfriend

Posted on by Jamie Dedes

I don’t mind being a spinster
Spinning, twirling, whirling, swirling in a tornado of stars conquering the galaxy
Like a Sufi
Harmonizing the sacred spiral dance to celebrate the divine in me
I can twerk too
But I will first knock on the window of your altered state of
Self-consciousness
Before intruding your geopolitical utopia with how my butt can really shake
I’d rather be a nun
And get myself thrown in jail for refusing to renounce the Dalai Lama
Than chanting the hypocritical words of the national anthem
I don’t mind being a cat-lady
For I’m used to the spoor of piss of Self-proclaimed gods marking their Territory
I’d rather you take a piss on me
Than being married off to one.

Daddy said,
This is the land of our fathers, not theirs.
Use your womb as a weapon against the Enemy
We gotta maintain our votes !
Get it on and breed as many Buddhist babies
“We five and our 25”
You must not lose to over-fertile Muslim housewives.

But daddy.
I’ve fallen in love with a Muslim man whose anarchic nipple hair grew in random directions
Jesus looking Indian who inherited a slaughter house from generation to generation.
His favourite dish is a home-cooked Persian culinary concoction
Of casserole sized pieces of lamb
Red kidney beans
And mid-eastern preserved lemons
I googled the recipe
For I don’t mind cooking it although I’m pescetarian
I could’ve been a vegetarian
But I feel less attached to sea creatures.
He doesn’t mind not eating meat when I’m around

-You know what makes this connection we have more profound?

My halal-Jesus-looking butcher is a wacky inflatable sky dancer
Whose arms flail like a winged sea cucumber in the deepest part of the ocean
He moves in erratic directions
—Just like his nipple hair
Eyebrows try to keep up
Peeks from behind a pillar somewhere with a creepy smile before he comes to get me

Let me dance with him please, daddy.
He can probably twerk too.

© Illya Sumanto

This poem will also appear on The Woven Tale Press website as part of a feature on Activist-Poets on Monday, April 25, 2016.

L to R: Malaysian Performance Poet Ilay Sumanto; St. Louis, MO, Poet Laureate Michael Castro; & Photographer Adelia Parker-Castro Salerno, Italy
L to R: Malaysian Performance Poet Illya Sumanto; St. Louis, MO, Poet Laureate Michael Castro; & Photographer Adelia Parker-Castro
Salerno, Italy

 

View guest contributor Illya Sumanto’s bio HERE

Author:

Jamie Dedes is a Lebanese-American poet and free-lance writer. She is the founder and curator of The Poet by Day, info hub for poets and writers, and the founder of The Bardo Group, publishers of The BeZine, of which she was the founding editor and currently a co-manager editor with Michael Dickel. Ms. Dedes is the Poet Laureate of Womawords Press 2020 and U.S associate to that press as well. Her debut collection, "The Damask Garden," is due out fall 2020 from Blue Dolphin Press.

Kindly phrased comments welcome here.

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.