"Bukit Timah Monkey Man Speaks", See Wern Hao
In the morning,
when the koel calls, I forage through trash cans
and pluck bananas, picking out strands
of sweetness. I stash some in a rainforest tree,
hoping to share, but I have seen the rest
stay away, clutching their high branches,
telling others to do the same.
The rot picks away slowly.
I cannot change
these stories. So I find myself inventing
new faces — macaque, banded surili.
But the foliage is shrinking.
I once ran through the undergrowth
thinning out into a road
and slammed into a steel car bonnet.
The driver thought I was a child,
but upon seeing me —
my frazzled body, sunspot-flaring ears —
he blared his horn at me.
Okay then. If you thought I would cower and scamper,
then I will stand, trembling
as the primordial man
who, in trying to discern the purr
of a lion or a motor, first saw beyond
the tall grass, the flickering high beam
of some new sun, an empty warning. Go on,
you will not wipe any of this off.