Power Distance

Nine hours after hiding

the severity of kinetic studies and efficacy graphs

in the ease of Panglao,

the pharmaceutical conference

finally lost

its brilliance.

Still armoured in his tie and twill suit,

my boss invites me to explore

the afternoon slivers of land on his rented Kawasaki.

I cannot say no and

become his helmetless pillion in seconds,

my grip tenacious

on his fabric shoulders.

He pushes north for an hour,

deserting in our trail

hired girlfriends and

orange signs that declare San Miguel as

Ito Ang Beer,

until we finally hit the rugged village roads.

His voice whips the wind

about a similar childhood,

thieving mangoes and spiders.

I know about his oldest brother,

now Australian,

but not the introvert,

nor a sister

once the adhesive of the family

now deceased.

He is earnest to reconnect but

inertia always wins.

In the back, I trace

the regret in his words.

Between the conference then,

the countryside now,

there is no balance

in this sudden biography.

He is pleased when I suggest

we stop for a cigarette,

his first in years.

There are no words exchanged,

only smoke,

and we have forgotten

about this power distance and

Monday morning.

Sonnet X (a parody of Shakespeare’s Sonnet XVIII, a tribute) - By Benjamin Goh

Shall I compare thee to a Hollywood celebrity?

Thou art more witty and more remarkable:

Rough winds do shake Natalie Portman’s wig in the city,

And Lady Gaga’s turned alien to make her songs marketable.

Sometime too little Victoria Beckham resembles human,

And seldom is Eva Longoria for Oscars nominat’d;

And every straight actress from straight sometime go lesbian,

By crook, or by oops to get their news disseminat’d:

But thy eternal Teachings shall not die

Nor lose possession of that truth thou sings;

Nor shall Time feign thy grandeur in the past doth lie,

When eternal triumphs to literature thou brings:

So long as Hollywood and politics worship the scatterbrained, and dogs can pee,

So long explicates this, and this steals an inexplicable (and forgiving) laugh from thee.

After This

Since virtuous women do not
underline their eyes,
I stopped bracketing mine with kohl.
Then I found someone
to unwind my hair
because curls are said to be
bad luck and defiance.
Chemicals broke
the bonds of waves,
the only known way to
subdue dominant genes.
Later I stayed
out of the sun,
remembering the women on television
who are always beautiful,
are also
always fair.
I learned to swallow
driving directions,
even after thirty minutes on the road
and the destination is still
awaiting discovery.
Once in a while, I make
a big show of
filial piety.


I can imagine after this,
I am finally beautiful.
I am accepted,
even desired
by men, their mothers,
my father's family
who will forget
what they once deemed
as a by-product of betrayal,
an anomaly.
This is not me,
but soon I will be
everyone's ideal:
Passive but beautiful,
Unheard but opinionated.
I will love them back
even if
they can only love a manufactured possibility.

Things I Didn't Know I Loved: After Nazim Hikmet by Linda Pastan

I always knew I loved the sky,

the way it seems solid and insubstantial at the same time;
the way it disappears above us
even as we pursue it in a climbing plane,
like wishes or answers to certain questions—always out of reach;
the way it embodies blue,
even when it is gray.

But I didn't know I loved the clouds,
those shaggy eyebrows glowering
over the face of the sun.
Perhaps I only love the strange shapes clouds can take,
as if they are sketches by an artist
who keeps changing her mind.
Perhaps I love their deceptive softness,
like a bosom I'd like to rest my head against
but never can.

And I know I love the grass, even as I am cutting it as short
as the hair on my grandson's newly barbered head.
I love the way the smell of grass can fill my nostrils
with intimations of youth and lust;
the way it stains my handkerchief with meanings
that never wash out.

Sometimes I love the rain, staccato on the roof,
and always the snow when I am inside looking out
at the blurring around the edges of parked cars
and trees. And I love trees,
in winter when their austere shapes
are like the cutout silhouettes artists sell at fairs
and in May when their branches
are fuzzy with growth, the leaves poking out
like new green horns on a young deer.

But how about the sound of trains,
those drawn-out whistles of longing in the night,
like coyotes made of steam and steel, no color at all,
reminding me of prisoners on chain gangs I've only seen
in movies, defeated men hammering spikes into rails,
the burly guards watching over them?

Those whistles give loneliness and departure a voice.
It is the kind of loneliness I can take in my arms, tasting
of tears that comfort even as they burn, dampening the pillows
and all the feathers of all the geese who were plucked to fill
them.

Perhaps I embrace the music of departure—song without lyrics,
so I can learn to love it, though I don't love it now.
For at the end of the story, when sky and clouds and grass,
and even you my love of so many years,
have almost disappeared,
it will be all there is left to love.

you believe there's something else to relieve your emptiness

My heart is
an expatriate in this body.

My mind is an oil stain
on tracing paper.

You said, Transit.

What I didn't mention over the phone
was after going back to sleep at 5am,
I dreamt about you,
you came over and asked if I wanted to smoke.

And I said, But Cain you left.

And you said, Yes I did.

And I asked, Why are you here?

You said, Transit.

I asked, How, where?

So it's been back and forth.
I suspect that I think about you,
more than I should.

I'm not sure if I can ever conform to those things,
not because I don't want to,
because I always thought you were
too
too, too

special

to shelf into one of those
byproducts of
human emotions.

I could never do that to you

Blackmores Fish Oil (Australia Edition)

Advertorial for my best buddy T, trying to support his impending days as a a student, supplementing his income by selling supplements.

Struggling students unite, your mothers too, please support

almost another year of silence,
he emerged from technology, and I was
once again inundated with thoughts of his
brown brown boots,
length of white skin,
his neigh for laughter

and how the ice in his whiskey glass,

tinkled against each other.

The Smile Takes Baton

First, the generous smile is

served alongside pleasantries.

Then I am asked to repeat my name.

I even spell it once for

good measure,

and feign laughter with them at the

gender ambiguity of it.

Once names,

sometimes professions,

sometimes neighbourhoods,

have been taken stock of,

the smile takes baton again.

“What are you?” they ask.

I should have a script:

That’s what everyone says, or

It’s my grandmother, or better still,

Want to see my I.C.?

But I don't

and hide my manners behind

an extended sip of drink,

as they lace

stereotypes with persistence,

terrorizing me with their own scripts:

CMI.

Perhaps I am O.

Perhaps I am here on a Pass,

so they nod with the sympathy

of a good host,

some vain welcome.

When it becomes obvious

they cannot fish an answer,

their smiles sink,

flattened into their faces like arid land,

cracked and embarrassed.

I can, like I have before,

be like numbers and decimal places,

rounding myself off to the closest profile

people can identify with.

I could also light up a cigarette to

toughen me for the impending scrutiny.

Or I could really just answer them.

But today,

I cannot be responsible again

for their disappointment

when they realise I am not

as exotic.

It is hard to wring empathy

when they agree cleverly with each other that

all my type looks this way.

It goes on like this for a while:

Their awkwardness snakes in and out of this conversation,

alternating with some of my guilt for being difficult.

Finally I resurrect the conversation with

some opinion on the pasta salad,

all the while returning to the notion of curiosity:

my longtime desire for a

more convenient reflection,

their question.

oh jeremy :)

to relieve others

Could see myself falling through clouds of vapor before crashing into a million pieces of flesh and bone, organs and limbs- just to relieve others of my existence.