THE PUNAN BATU CLAN

by Diana Morley

Halfway up the mountain was a cavern as large as an amphitheater. The cave, which contained a dense concentration of swiftlet nests, is a sacred site for the Punan, who consider it the source of all things. Once inside, a man named Ma’ruf took a seat on the dirt floor. He was in his early 40s but appeared to be half that age, with swooped-over bangs and the youthful skin that comes from a life lived in the shade…. Ma’ruf began to hum, a deep and powerful vocalization that rose from his chest and echoed through the cave. Words took shape in a language only the elders understood. “I am like a porcupine who comes to the cave to rest,” he chanted, according to a translation of a recording of the chant made by Dr. Lansing. —“A Vanishing Nomadic Clan, With a Songlike Language All Their Own: New genetic research confirms the oral history of a small group of nomadic people living in Indonesia’s rainforest,” The New York Times, September 19, 2023

I am like a porcupine who comes to the cave to rest.

I am a benign soul grateful to be guest

seeking only the divine sleep of the blessed. 

Another day I may be gregarious, feel auspicious, 

forgetting the need to be scrupulous— 

but so worn I now risk becoming odious.

Easy to think reading about is knowing about

but pulling up from my core to bombinate,

to drone, as I can only in my dreams, 

thirsting to crawl into the cave to hold his hand. 

Half a world away, in awe of the sounds,

musical if not lyrical, plucking sounds

from belly, tuned from birth to the heart.

I am like a poet come today to words

from others in my family never met,

feeling the ken of their words, wanting 

to touch as if I knew how to feel by braille.

Diana Morley has published poetry online and in journals and in her poetry books. If she stopped writing, it would be the end. 

WASHINGTON AND THE REDSKINS

by James Penha

The Map Is Not the Territory: Parallel Paths—Palestinians, Native Americans, Irish

Fleeing European horrors,
God's chosen landed at a great rock
on which they built their havens,
their temples, and their theocracies
and squatted the nomadic tribes
ignorant of salvation and so damned
(if human enough to have life
after life at all). Settlers made
manifest their destiny
to exploit, expropriate,
disease, enslave,
blanket, and reserve the savages.
And when the natives resisted
eternal occupation, the settlers,
republicans by then and democrats,
made war and baubles
of redskins.

And now Washington mouths
itself agape in the mirror of the middle east.


James Penha edits The New Verse News.