One night, I swallowed a planet.
Two moons later, a wrong word
shifted a wormhole via bad praxis.
Using language as a fork for soup:
these tears I stippled on my cheeks
where they should be rolling down.
Another night of failed application.
When you deconstruct my apologies
in a black hole, all sentiment is lost
like the wormhole above. Speaking,
when I cannot hear myself in space.
It’s not like you heard, or replied.
Category Archives: Food
Writer’s Trap
I found a poem so clichéd it was painful.
Proceeded to use a bandage. Left it where
I dropped it. Clichéd is now a pun for hurt.
It is eye-catching like how Fool’s Gold is an
idiom. By association it is a mousetrap topped
with a slice of cheese. The cheese has holes in it.
I am not actually a mouse. I like metaphors to the
extent of breaking my fingers for them. Wrapped them
in this piece, applied pressure to stop the bleeding.
Found clichés abound under the sun even though
it is nighttime now. No outer space references here.
Just filler in inner spaces without the negativity.
Mushroom
Under a roof are sweet nothings with everything
present. Like the pan in the kitchen,
if the sound of sautéing is love it would leap,
a delicious scent. Like spores of butter,
home is rooted into the ground even after raindrops
create puddles. Like splashing onto each other’s warmth.
Absence Notes
Currently participating in 2018’s iteration of SingPoWriMo (“Singapore Poetry Writing Month”), where in addition I have also volunteered for the role of a moderator (which means lots of half-baked critique dressed in casual comments). I may or may not upload links to this space once this siesta is over.
Also, one of our good poet friends have been discovered to be plagiarizing stanzas from the very beginning – I worry since the impact of such an exposé on her might be that of falling off a building, but likewise, I think for the users unaware of the theft.
A part of me is glad that my metaphors can be harvested like sweet potatoes. Not the most delicious things – But there’s sufficient time for selective breeding.
Dumplings
Mom claims she forgot, two decades without
touching a chopping board. But it’s still drying
up against the wall after being washed.
“Just buy frozen ones,” I pled, waking this morning
instead to find ingredients and flour painting the table,
filling the wrinkles of her hands. Eternal summers give us
less reason to handwash, too much like wringing sweat, but
the swept-back hair exposing her slick forehead is from
her habit of forgetting things and taking the long way.
It is the skins. Every fold pressed in has her going
back and forth. She loads in water chestnuts, mushrooms,
diced meat and the last of her morning. She serves them
in soup hot as the afternoon, still fresher than the memory when
I last had them at ten – it was night then, same ingredients
on a moldy board with fewer scars than her in Dad’s old house.
At least she remembers the recipe, and doesn’t need to return there.
Lune L. 