Weeks after Bak died
nobody dared to touch his things
his one black songkok tucked in
the corner of the brown gerobok
his sarongs remain folded
crisp from corner to corner
his white checkered shirt
another checkered shirt
another checkered shirt
We move with the sun, and the sun has been drifting.
These days light is further away and comes wrong—
meltwater dims every depth and the slick
of oil and ballast mars waves into mirrors.
Every night, something glares. It isn't the moon.
There is nowhere else to go
but down to the earth where
we often bury secrets and loved ones.
Dig me out, dig me in
blanket our problems with dirt
CW: self-harm, suicide, depression and homophobic slurs
In another dream just like this one, you belonged to me. You, and that tide pool reflection. That's how things were before everything hemorrhaged as the ocean. Summer of ’99 when the morning had set sail and I was sissy with a conch shell. That’s what they called me then.
Read MoreCW: death, misogyny, drugs, bodily harm, sexual + domestic violence
Solidarity on Facebook? Apparently, people get together to rehearse the scientific truth of Law and Order. Death to criminals, to the disenfranchised, to the margins. I felt, I thought, I wished: how nice it would be to be able to relate to someone, but I cannot touch another's hand while they find safety in being faceless, safety via misreading the violence done to all of us.
Read Moretake care of your books,
they catch the dust of your whimpers.
God is a cliché,
paring one soul and another.
someone says a rhyme is sublime,
they play tennis without a net.
After American Gods
This is the one where Titania actually visits a divorce lawyer after months of swanning around Bukit Timah, complaining about Oberon’s new lang suir mistress who gave him chlamydia.
Read MoreBored of the laser wars,
we throw on our silversuits,
hotwire a spacehawk,
and steal into the next system.
Starfields streak past our bodies;
a dance of celestial rain.
No-one knows. We’ll be back
before roll call.
neck straining my vision morphs
underside of a snow globe I taste how
familiar it feels again
Read MoreAs if I used to hold the shape of water. A natural body
holds its joy in its container. This was my innocence.
This, too, was its loss. As if a poem can always be
the pliable body you want it to be. I inhale deeply,
And in the infinite stretch between air and exhalation,
I am pierced by a hundred microplastic images,
a hundred synthetic insertions.
the one who became getai
or stagehand or stage for a family —
what was in the bun, in sparse distribution,
not worth the price of its plastic housing?
I am in line for one thing that leads to the next & away from
the sigh that sloughs off the edge of a bubble
— what was it you said in the shower that the rain repeated
because I am a poor listener?
Highlighter-green buses. Traffic lights casually
humming the melody of asphalt mornings.
Under each bus-stop roof, rays sweep thousands
of yawning faces with schoolbags packed like
dumplings: calculators, chromebooks & for many
the shame of undone homework.
In the restaurant, the waiter still thinks
we are friends. I read the menu in its
arrogant cursive, remember the letters
I’ve received from you — each little alphabet
curled valiantly, the confident brushstrokes
of an artist seasoned with age.
things past, acknowledge that
back then, tense tends to fluctuate
to subvert weight. depends, whether i’m
in sense or in tents. fast forward, found myself
in tens. writing group, some extracts, pens,
changing lens just as things commence.
CW: mention of death
So my aunt died, and that same day I walked
Down the street and back, from house to house,
Telling the news to strangers on my block,
Pretending I had something to disclose,
A child with a secret, although that secret was
Secret only to me
a beach mourns the sand stuck in the front of my shoes.
i don't remember this.
at a diner i flinch at the likeness of your name.
just one letter off. i look for this letter in my shoes.
outside, a man cups his hands in front of his face and kisses the window.
for your audition. for your exam. for getting
your hands on breakfast. for learning three languages
long since dead. for clinching that scholarship.
for navigating your new campus. for navigating
capitalism. for navigating academic email chains.
for receiving timely replies.
that was the year he started
walking in fear, feeling shame
lodged like a plank, or a pickaxe,
conspicuous, clumped in the
brain, the weight of God in
the arched two backs of sacred
and profane.
Here growls the trespasser,
unbolting himself from the gate of his crowd,
a Usain from start to finish,
a feast waiting for dark spell working.
Time for little flashbacks,
spring rain outside, the cuddles in bed,
sleep-ins, her tiny hand around his finger.
Read More