sometimes, after sex, when nights are humid, she kicks the covers off, dreaming of her previous life. in the dark, i pick up the skin, all flesh, dermis, fat, tuck it back over muscle, sinew, gristle, loose folds signs of our marital wear.
Read Morehow do you say / that the lung / if lung collapses / like a crumb / crumb of sand / the rain / ?
Read MoreIt is 11PM on a Sunday night and I am getting a haircut in an industrial warehouse in Geylang. My friend Gwen runs a part time barber shop in this studio space which they share with their partner. There is something about getting your hair cut by a fellow queer person that makes it a hundred times less stressful: a kind of mutual understanding. There is also something about being in a space run by someone from your community that makes it feel like freedom.
Read MoreFirst-time slam poets are known as ‘virgin virgins’ according to Marc Smith, the founder of Poetry Slam. He even has a section in his book Take the Mic on virgin poet testimonies. He writes, “It only happens once, that day when you finally open your mouth in front of strangers and hear your words, your creations crack the silence” (Smith, 78).
Read MoreWhat if I told you that everything I write doesn’t just come from me, but is connected to a source much larger and infinite? You’d probably call me delusional and a bit woo-woo. A bit out there.
Read More2020 has been a wild, vicious ride so far. Luckily, we can still look forward to the one major event of the year that viruses cannot cancel (yet): the highly social distancing-friendly Singapore Poetry Writing Month 2020.
Read MoreAs you reach your block, the rain begins to subside like the bastard it has been all week. There goes your secret desire to take a hot shower while the tropical rain rages outside.
Read Moremy mother dug me from seashells:
two specks of sand from saltwater left to rest
on the vanity in a resort room.
As whirlpool. As wand. As window. As one
whole gaze refracted in the watch’s glass.
As widowed fragments of metaphor. As wolf
scrabbling at hearth, wearing its form down
to the size of a lap.
before then i had never been kissed
on the ankle. there were no right
angles on the fourth floor: corridors
curved around pillars for privacy,
escalators around atriums for
vertigo.
Write what you know
Should I try to twist a poem out of memories
I don’t have of birthdays and graduations and holidays
Write what you know
Cut her down at every opportunity because
it’s not criticism, it’s love, and it’s not fatshaming
if she’s just fat and you’re warning her off the
extra few cookies that will stop a boy from loving her body.
i swallowed their fridge the other day and felt in my gullet
a brief percussion of twenty beers, but that was it.
i wonder what the boy was thinking | yeah
the geomancer explained | there was math
in the culture of cotton candy calculus
& in the garden
I’m an altar boy
untouched by life
watching Christ breathing
slow and hard on the cross
there is a mattress, and you
pull me towards you. strewn
amongst the mud and grass,
we are intertwined. you are
salt and copper.
Watch the coast. Angular substance
of the world tucked in a teal & shining
duvet; tread quietly. As poetry taught us:
in the end the things we love give back
our names.
and this time, when you curl up in bed next to me, it is because we want the warmth of familiar bodies. and when you say that the night is lonely, i stretch my arms only to fill the space of that absence.
Read Moreyou're drunk. good. write me a love song. for no-one else. just me.
Read MoreThis is for the poem that didn’t want to attend Literature class,
the one that never raised her hand unless asked for directly.