GAS Featured Poet: Iwan Setiawan

Iwan Setiawan was born in Kotabumi, North Lampung, on 23 August 1980. He has pursued the path of poetry with a Sufistic and melancholic sensibility. His poems move through silent territories between divine love, loss, and inner contemplation. His work has appeared in various online and print media, often blending lyrical and symbolic language with meaningful silences, making poetry not merely an expression but a space for contemplation.

Iwan Setiawan is the author of the poetry collection Sang Pencari Cinta (The Seeker of Love), as well as Kitab Puisi Melankolia (The Book of Melancholy Poems), co-written with Silvia Ikhsan. In 2017, he received the Littera Magazine Literary Award. 

THE PRAYER THAT EATS ITS OWN SHADOW

I walk into God

like a wound forgetting its blood

the night teaches me a new alphabet

where silence is the only vowel

my name rots gently in Your mouth

I do not resist

I become the hunger You never confess

angels turn their faces away

not from sin

but from how deeply I kneel

faith is an animal

licking its own shadow

until darkness says amen

West sumatera, 2026

LESSON FROM A DEAD SAINT

the saint died

still holding Your silence

between his ribs

they said he was holy

but holiness is only

how long one survives without answers

I pressed my ear to his chest

heard worms chanting

the most honest prayer

teach me this decay

teach me to disappear

without leaving heaven homeless

West sumatera, 2026

GOD WRITES ME AS A MISTAKE

You write my life

with a trembling hand

ink made of doubt

every breath crosses out

the sentence before it

I am revised by suffering

do not correct me

let me remain wrong

inside Your book

because even errors

are a way

of being remembered

West sumatera, 2026

THE MIRROR WHERE GOD REFUSES TO APPEAR

I break every mirror

yet You remain

breathing behind my eyes

the heart is a ruined mosque

no door

no direction

only dust reciting dust

I pray with borrowed bones

my soul trembling

like a candle afraid of light

if You are not here

why does absence bleed

why does nothing

know my name

West sumatera, 2026

THE BODY THAT FORGOT HOW TO BELIEVE

My body kneels

Before my faith understands why

Bones argue with prayer

Blood hesitates at the word God

I fast from certainty

Drink only doubt

Until hunger becomes a teacher

Inside my chest

A ruined altar breathes

Asking nothing

Yet taking everything

If belief returns

Let it come wounded

Let it limp

So I know it is real

West sumatera, 2026

I TRIED TO LEAVE GOD UNFINISHED

I tried to leave You unfinished

Like a sentence without mercy

But every silence chased me

Wearing Your face

I hid inside sleep

Inside flesh

Inside the future

Yet You kept happening

Now I sit among the ruins

Holding what is left of my name

If this is union

Let it hurt

If this is loss

Let it be Yours

West sumatera, 2026

GAS Featured Poet: Frederick Pollack

 

Frederick Pollack is author of two book-length narrative poems, THE ADVENTURE and HAPPINESS (Story Line Press; the former reissued 2022 by Red Hen Press), and four collections, A POVERTY OF WORDS (Prolific Press, 2015), LANDSCAPE WITH MUTANT (Smokestack Books, UK, 2018), THE BEAUTIFUL LOSSES (Better Than Starbucks Books, 2023), and THE LIBERATOR (Survision Books, Ireland, 2024). Many other poems in print and online journals. Website: www.frederickpollack.com.

In the Walls

They were in prison under Putin,

then via miracle

came here; are eventually

imprisoned again under Trump,

freed by a larger miracle. That’s when I meet them.

Her English is better than his but she seldom speaks;

her response to camp conditions was

to become a listener. 

Ravaged smile. He, moon-faced, talks readily,

not only about his continuing, death-defying 

activism but a moment in prison when,

at last, he slept. On the verge

of waking he heard, perhaps a fart, perhaps

a curse from a cellmate, a cry

from above, and perceived them not

as sounds from reality but creaks and footfalls

from the corridors behind

this world. Where gods no smarter than we, 

less in fact but immortal, stumble

endlessly forward, sometimes blundering

into our realm where they, by accident,

do mostly ill.

Those Russians are the sort of friends 

I might have had if my life had been more … 

dynamic. I invented them and project 

experiences onto them because

they’re less averse than I to “spiritual” topics,

and because they’re more important.

Blockage

As isolation spreads, the existence of

a spirit world becomes harder and harder

to deny. Some of the living 

are glad their parents are back (and more

connected, for the most part, than before);

some are horrified. And when it’s

kids who return – well, 

of course one’s overjoyed (although 

they’re always in a sense “special needs”).

Welcome for spouses, friends, siblings

depends on the specifics of relationships. 

There’s a return to family, often very extended.

Conservatives especially value it.

One opinion, hard to articulate, is that

what all this reveals is disappointing. 

Whether believed in or not, the afterlife offered

change, perhaps improvement, at least clarity.

Now we learn that everyone 

just wants to come (back) here.

These clouds of dead are merely (though only

hard-right podcasters say it) immigrants …

There’s also the problem 

of ghosts who return to the wrong place.

One showed up at my place.

Seemed slow, insisted I was someone else,

then began to apologize. 

This was early on; I’m afraid I let 

the pressure we were all under show.

Now, years later, I

wander, trying to find 

him or someone who knew him, say I’m sorry.