CYRIL WONG


Cyril Wong is a poet, fictionist and critic. Poems here are taken from his book,
Tilting Our Plates to Catch the Light (Singapore: Math Paper Press 2012).
More about him here.







The cabdriver reveals that her parents
died in the same bed, holding hands.
An autopsy was carried out, meaning
nobody believed they had made
that decision to go like that together.
They could find no sign of poison
and no other explanation for how they
could have known to reach across a gulf
of sleep between them and take hold
before their bodies became statues
of themselves. I think about us,
as the taxi stops outside my home,
the apartment we love that we are still
paying for. I think about beginnings,
about the lovers who instructed us
and the lovers whom we instructed,
before arriving at the lessons of each other,
the ones that continue to teach us now.
I imagine we are standing on a coast
in a black-and-white film, together
with everyone we have ever loved.
A thin white tsunami appears across
the horizon. All of us are walking
into the foam, walking straight
to that singular wave. Some are holding
each other's hands, while others hold
only themselves against the rising water.
I leave the cab, take out my keys, but
pause at our front door, the sea
shouting in my ears, as I wonder
what time you will be home.










The men we loved, the men we had, the men we wanted.
They pass us in the streets. They are going to the gym,
to the park, to the pub, to invisible rooms on the internet.
They cast their lines of hunger for other men now.

The men we wanted who wanted nothing to do with us.
The men we hid our names from and crept away.
They are disappearing into their work, into the rest
of their lives, picking up their phones to answer
another man's voice and putting them down again.

The men we had now plough the ache of other men.
Time flips them over each other and abrades them
to the bone. These men who taught us to be bridges
on the way to somewhere else, something better.

The men we loved who wiped the disappointment
from our lips with a thumb, a tongue down a throat.
A promise to call again and the promise fulfilled.
Long before the accident, the illness, the overseas job,
a touch turned cold, the averted vision, the other man.

The men we loved, the men we had, the men we wanted.
They have done far worse than fail to miss us—
they have forgotten us. Each is slinking into a cab
with another guy and does not wave goodbye.

These men who once taught us of ourselves
crane to hear the call of new lives now, the call
that is always waiting to be answered, a boy crying
wolf, or maybe the truth this time. This truth

we leave our better selves for, only to find them again
when we least expect it, a face rising like a moon
in the night's long window, a night we are scaling with
our hearts in our mouths. Then when we reach the top
of the stairs, what luck—the moon has become a mirror.










The laundry can wait. So can the dishes.
Our emails and mobile phones too.
We could sit out naked by the window
if we dared, or we could catch the news.
I could watch you struggle not to doze
off during the sports announcements.
There will be plenty of time for sleep.

Since you asked, the plants are watered.
The light has stopped flickering, since
I replaced the bulb. Who knows, the dishes
might clean themselves after we are gone.
How about if we add an extra hour
to our day, so we may fill it with our sighs?
There will be plenty of time for sleep.

For now, let us settle into the dimness
of evening, our talk like the passing
of a melody from one instrument
to another. Are you worried about how
early you would have to go to work
tomorrow? Take a breath. Look at me.
There will be plenty of time for sleep.










Here between the country
that will not remember our love
and the sea, our clothes spill

like sand from a tilted
palm. Then we are walking
arm in arm. We are gazing

in the same, unwavering direction.
There is no need to mourn
for what we have left behind.

Look as our footprints
evaporate when we approach
the chiming of waves, waves

rising and tugging at us like joy.
This is not an ending
and time has not been

unkind. We reach the edge
of our lives. We stop in awe
of how much further we have to go.



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