Steep Tea by Jee Leong Koh

Author:Jee Leong Koh
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781784100469
Publisher: Carcanet

Bougainvillea

… the heart

can sometimes be troublesome.

Lee Tzu Pheng, ‘Singapore River’

When the island is starved for a hymn,

this land of bougainvillea, illegible graves, and car dealerships,

where eating has usurped the offices of sex,

where sun is oppressively silent and rain everywhere gossips,

as the ear remembers one musical phrase, we clutch our name,

sung by a long-dead mother, beyond a deaf father’s reach,

and agonize over eating our name

or planting it in the beach.

We look over the wall to see what our neighbors do.

Their garden is smooth as a pair of jeans.

They look as hungry as yesterday.

When they greet us, they sound obscene.

Shall we eat it? We are so hungry.

It will recall the satisfactions of lying with a woman or a man.

No! We must plant it.

But what if our name does not grow songs in sand?

The bougainvillea puts out pink and purple flowers, rice paper-thin.

The graves settle back defeated by air.

The cars exchange hands like trophies.

The sun is silent oppressively and the rain gossips everywhere.

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