Publisher: Game Over Books 2020
The Backwaters Prize in Poetry
Paperback, pp.42
ISBN: 978-1732498693
Dena Igusti is a queer Indonesian Muslim poet, playwright, and producer. Cut Woman is Igusti’s debut chapbook. The title refers to the violent practice of FGM, of which Igusti is a survivor. In his poem “altar” Igusti writes:
[ . . .] CNN called auntie’s celebration
FEMALE GENITAL MUTILATION
the gauze between my legs // becomes //
a banner for each pity party in my body //
Cut Woman is not, however, poetry of self-pity or pity-seeking poetry. It is as strong as the strongest cliché about strength. One could say that it’s a collection of poems about trauma, dissociation, and reconnecting with that dissociated self. One could also say it’s largely a collection about loss, personal and community-wide. Loss is right there in the first line of “bounty” the opening poem:
the grenade’s lung exhaled into our chests
and muslims have been spilled ever since
However, after months of engaging with Cut Woman, I no longer say that it is about loss, disassociation, or reconnecting with that dissociated self. Now, I hesitate to even call it a collection. Yes, these poems are bound within an intriguing cover, are published, and have their own ISBN. Yes, okay, a collection. Still, and instead, I want to call it process. Process, not as in unfinished. Process, as in, this is not a collection of poems about loss. This is the navigation of loss. It’s a right-here-happening-now-on-the-page navigation of loss. This is not a collection about reconnecting disassociated self. This is reconnecting with dissociated self. It’s a right-here-happening-now-on-the-page reconnection with dissociated self. Verb not noun. This is embodiment. Verb not noun. You, as reader, are witness.
This sense of intimately witnessing Igusti’s personal odyssey is attributable to his willingness to experiment until whatever the journey requires of this poet is brought forth. Words, lines, and poems in Cut Woman are brought forth exactly the way they need to be and only the way they can be. That might appear as all-caps, the absence of a word, a one-act play, an erasure poem, double slash marks, bilingualism, the use of both margins, and/or whatever it takes. All of this is more than playful experimentation. It feels essential as Igusti courses his journey:
From “altar”:
at 9 years old // in a dusty kitchen // i am sprawled // out on the metal altar //
woman in a house dress // face mask // no gloves //dips // a scalpel in a bowl
of muddy water // i ask my tante [ …]
Notice the double slashes, the lower case i, the fragmented list of imagery. How do you feel about those choices? Are they random? Perhaps each was chosen because it was the one and only choice for this moment in Igusti’s trek as he brings this experience as close to the page as wordly (and worldly) as possible. In other words, the opposite of disassociation. To me, those double dashes feel and look like blankets protecting every word. They feel like a safe space, a safe space for a trauma survivor to bring it to the page. And what about the fragmentation in that excerpt? Would memory of such gruesome trauma happen in complete sentences with proper punctuation?
How close to the page can a poet bring disassociation?
From “after the incision”:
i tell me i miss you
i ask can we ever happen again
the body leans in
[ . . .]
i sob.
From “self portrait as kuntilanak:”
but I’m forever tethered
to the way
my body is suspended
in memory
Here Igusti writes about the anchoring effect of trauma when, from that point on, living is forever in relation to that moment. Because of Igusti’s creative play with form and because the form matches the moment, even this excerpt hovers, feels tethered, lingers.
Throughout Cut Woman Igusti navigates layers of identity and loss. In fact, it almost reads as a poetic archive of loss, one that includes the anticipation of loss. In his* poem “sacrifice (reprise), or trajectory” he writes:
[ . . .] I think a lot // about death // for someone //
so afraid of dying // i call all my not-loves a loss and grieve
for parts of me: whether it’s 2 strands of hair
The poem of loss “the tsunami drowns rick del gado’s ‘usa for indonesia’” is one of Igusti’s erasure found-poems. It’s an erasure of the lyrics of a disgustingly racist parody of “We Are the World” about the 2004 Indian Ocean earthquake and tsunami:
there was a time,
a wave 20 feet high
washed whole country away
The use of erasure here seems multi-functional in navigating this particular loss. Visually, there is an immediate sense of so many lives swept away. It is loss on the page. Remaining words are now distanced as if fractured family members that survived. Secondly, the erasure serves in taking away some of Del Gado’s white power.
In spite of, or perhaps, due to its painful subject matter, there is power in Dena Igusti’s first book of poetry. Power, life, and living.
“sex: a necromancy”:
(which my mother wasn’t allowed to feel that which hers couldn’t either)
this time a thing that will feel sharp but in the best way this time
I’ll make use of what was left of what I lost
And from “in this life you said roses”:
meanwhile, all versions of (what’s left of) me // will try to figure out a way to say
As devastating and as full of loss as Cut Woman is, it is equally full of joy and living. How could it not be? It’s right there on the page. Dena Igusti is right there on the page.
* For those wondering if this has been a typo. Yes, female genital mutilation requires a clitoris. It does not, however, require that the person with said clitoris identify as female.