1 December 2019 

How long, O LORD? Will you forget me forever? How long will you hide your face from me? How long must I take counsel in my soul and have sorrow in my heart all the day? How long shall my enemy be exalted over me? 

Psalm 13:1-2

I’m the traveller waiting in transit,

whose flight is not yet fixed or known to him,

in a foreign land whose food he now eats, 

whose language he now speaks fluently in. 

The boarding time—that’s still a mystery, 

but the retail offers make up for it, 

and the cheap spa’s soothing soul therapy, 

one would give up checking every minute. 

Crowds or jostling bother not much longer

than the dated movies showing on screen, 

so other travellers ‘round drinks gather,

forget the land they were meant to be in:

the land of ancestors and native tongues,

of healing and soulful songs to be sung.

Hunched, with a cane, under whipping echoes
of foreign men’s curses, he half-squatted, half-

sat pregnant with, heaving, a chest-full lifetime of
lies slipping through the shackles of his blank gaze;

on his trembling lap sits his children’s hopes
crafted in Hindi on generic postcards; one falls

onto his scabbed foot swollen from the earth’s
protestations against his lot – his only worth.

Published in SINGPOWRIMO:THE ANTHOLOGY, edited by Ann Ang, Joshua Ip and Pooja Nansi, Math Paper Press (2014)

Words are poor things

Sometimes
I have loved
the peacefulness of an ordinary Sunday.
It is like standing
in a newly planted garden after a warm rain.
You can feel
the silent and invisible life.
Any human face
is a claim on you, because
you can’t help but understand
the singularity of it,
the courage and loneliness of it.
But this is truest of the face of an infant.
I consider that to be one kind of vision,
as mystical as any. Love is
holy because it is like grace–
the worthiness of its object is never
really what matters.
There is no justice
in love, no proportion in it,
and there need not be,
because in any specific instance it is
only a glimpse or parable
of an embracing, incomprehensible reality.
It makes no sense at all
because it is the eternal breaking in
on the temporal. So how could it
subordinate itself to cause or consequence?
There are a thousand thousand reasons
to live this life,
everyone of them sufficient.
Grace has a grand laughter in it.
There’s so much to be grateful for,
words are poor things.

Published in SingPoWriMo 2016: The Anthology (Math Paper Press: 2016)

I’m the traveller waiting in transit,

whose flight is not yet fixed or known to him,

in a foreign land whose food he now eats, 

whose language he now speaks fluently in. 

The boarding time—that’s still a mystery, 

but the retail offers make up for it, 

and the cheap spa’s soothing soul therapy, 

one would give up checking every minute. 

Crowds or jostling bother not much longer

than the dated movies showing on screen, 

so other travellers ‘round drinks gather,

forget the land they were meant to be in:

the land of ancestors and native tongues,

of healing and soulful songs to be sung.

The womb is filled with echoes from drops of 

warm pregnant tears, warm as the blood boiling 

within the ribs slow braising until soft—

can humans ever be made from cooked things?— 

with enough heat, flesh melts. The small wet space

beneath lit stove is dark as December, 

nothing lies there but a white flag raised;

the sour smell of rain draws the broken near

and cold wind scatters unused seeds afar. 

So, after hope simmers, loss evaporates,

there’s nothing left except a reservoir

of testimonies noone wishes said.

She spends her hours there long, sipping tea,

preparing dinner to set her soul free.