Poetry

It is as if we are falling backward, towards the sky, towards the structural silencing of bannos, and Bath’s words wrap around us like curled balloon string and lead us back toward the ground.

These poems feel grainy with rich texture, like sinking your hands into the soil, the way it stays between your fingers all day if you don’t scrub your hands clean.

Sophronius writes from an awareness of Chinese Indonesian marginality, yet the pulse of the collection’s counternarrative coheres around an Indonesian national identity.