Write.
Write about the time they placed your nephew in your arms, and you oh-so-briefly thought about becoming a parent, even though you know you’d be a shitty one.
Write.
Read MoreThe dark red of his buttons reminded him of nenek’s sirih. Her stained teeth coloured his childhood, as did her stories of magical beings and wise kings, and the water spirits that would claim him if he didn’t listen to his elders.
Read MoreI am eighteen years old and I am standing at the steps of
a books and music megastore. It is nineteen ninety-eight.
Distant are the days where Life! would run a sprawling half-page review of a new local poetry collection, pausing from this largesse only to insert glossy color photo of bard and book.
Read MoreNo man is an island, and neither is any literary community--even if it does exist on a tiny island nation-state.
Read MoreI had never written a poem, but I was inspired to find out more about this heartstring-tugging performance art I had just discovered.
Read MoreTeo Xiao Ting speaks about the process of writing a manuscript, and her journey in the Manuscript Bootcamp.
Read MoreOn the 22nd of January earlier this year, a rather peculiar Facebook Messenger group was created by the good people behind Sing Lit Station, the driving force behind the annual Singapore Poetry Writing Month (also known as SingPoWriMo, SPWM, spwm, April is the cruelest month, etc, etc).
Read MoreI hate how every conversation I start
these days becomes one about race. What’s the
big deal? And suddenly I’m reeking of fishing
village, as I do when I joke about things
run the sand through your fingers and tell me
the earth isn’t dying for you. tell me this video
has “no journalistic value”, that the digging
stopped years ago.
Years since, the suit has finally
begun to lose its itch. Each April here
the trees rediscover themselves
in an airborne blitz of petals, infectious
with news of closer warmth.
At the coffee shop, I once saw a man brush the seat of a plastic chair even though it was clean. Two days since arriving and I still feel the dry heat on my skin. The water back home felt a lot colder than here.
Read Morethe business of / construction / means a person / occupied by different persons
Read MoreYou wake up; the first thing you do
Is tap on the WeChat app.
The Bissu foretold oppressors
that liberate, liberators that
oppress, sex and gods bound
to erasure, even with prayer.
consider the moon’s rotation
around earth, or its phases.
how it returns to the beginning.
this is not a poem about night
Hougang Green you are not my mall
Hougang Green you are not a mall at all
You are a concrete madhouse
a beige bengster wonderland
you are Gatsby moving rubber melting in the tropical heat
The catch is keeping on.
Every eternal recurrence.
Each unworthy thought.
There are obligations, and then there
are obligations – where there won’t be
a man holding up a placard to tell you
to stand and applaud.
many agree, without contest, on the following set of truths when talking about the incidents of 8 dec 2013
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