Winter, 2010

We shed our clothes like swimmers,

dive into bed. You smear sunblock

over my prickly arms, as if I'll brown

like an obedient leaf. I dutifully dab

your dry forehead, tracing invisible

polygons of sweat. Your old Bermudas

crease and crumple, knees knocking

under fluorescent light. Popsicles bite

our paralysed tongues. Six months,

you hiss, finger-counting. I blanket you

like secret snow, melting heavily

into your warmest corners.

Knowledge

Midnight, taxi nos count boundaries
like passing signs; restaurant nos twitch

as elbows collide, forks intersecting.
Cinema nos recoil, chuckling nervously

as popcorn scatters. Staircase nos blame
leering cameras, straightening collars.

Elevator, escalator; still no. Bedroom nos end
in slammed doors, trembling hands. Or yes,

murmured till bodies halt; barely outweighing
the strain of refusal.

To Not Become Her

I tread on the vegetables,
feed you ice-cream.

Shave off both eyebrows,
dye my skin orange.

Scowl at the neighbours,
bite the postman.

Snort when you sulk,
hog the duvet.

Rip up my skirts,
prowl the house naked.

Yawn with my mouth full,
shout in the shower.

Eschew logic,
avoid feeling.

Go to sleep, everything is all right. - Roy Orbison

It starts with a hurricane - your house,

red-roofed, enlarged.

Finger-plucked

from its garden, a hideous kite

careening.

In its wake, brick-crumbs

scattered like sugar.

Neighbours gawk

as it blows out of sight: lands southwards,

under a lowered sky

like in Canada, where summer snows

and clouds sink

like soft boats,

scorched at the edges.

I wait, re-tying my shoelace,

snake in the wheat field.

Ribs throbbing, to the roar

of your London cab.

Your foot emerges:

the rest bare-faced,

rounded with child.

Ends with a lull, the creak of stasis.

The last things: your flushed cheeks,

peach like morning.

Bursting suitcase proudly presiding

over crackling grass.

Its father, unknown; this dream,

not a nightmare.

Jalan Ampas

Behind my apartment, a sign shouts

NO PAKING - bloody letters

that refuse to spell.

Gangly streetlamps,

fattened pigeons; a road

sun-steamed like coal.

Then the canal.

Water trickles, sluicing cracks

choking algae.

Joggers thud past

as the drizzle begins, baby eddies

surrounding pin-pricks.

10/7/10

Invisible jets roar overhead,

while yellowed leaves twitch

like dying fish.

Old age homes recognise

the noise of war, standing silent

even at dinnertime.

Boy

The photograph on the dresser told me
you were your father's double. First-born son,

they wept at your arrival, took you home
to be dressed. Drove you to the best kindergarten,

taught you to speed a bicycle. You raced
with mechanical dinosaurs; read Roald Dahl

on stormy afternoons, watched cartoons
with a Milo mug. Safe from influenza,

you grew up happy. Met girls in McDonald's,
joined the school band. Hated your haircut,

plucked a second-hand guitar, slept fitfully
in a crowded bunk. Took me home, led me to

your parents' bedroom. It was nearly dawn;
we couldn't wake your sister. There they were

with eighties hair, matching smiles; engaged,
legitimate. All we could only dream of being.

Three Endings

1.

Uncle Steve, forty-five.
Bespectacled egg-head
usually invited,

always in yellow, ironed chinos.
Skilled at karaoke,
bad with jokes.

One wife, a teacher.
A son, Chris, I bickered with
but secretly loved.

He was poor, Dad said
despite the Mercedes.
They sold their house,

moved to a three-room flat.
Respectable, Mum agreed,
slipping off her shoes.

He killed himself
in September, flightless pigeon
plummeting past windows.

Chris found his body
after football; pushing, shoving
through the commotion.

2.

Uncle Pete, fifty-one.
Woolly eyebrows, shy smile:
an ex-convict.

He’d stabbed his girlfriend,
Dad confided, then slashed himself.
Cheating bitch.

Always the quiet ones
who explode, then get released
for good behaviour.

They become pastors
with neat haircuts,
strengthened by remorse.

Help their friends
move furniture, puffing with strain;
gently kiss their daughters.

Die from cancer
a decade later.
Churchgoers gathered round

his bedside, tear-stained women
wringing their hands.
At least he’d gone to Heaven.

3.

Uncle Rob, fifty-nine.
Rotund, sportive, a fixture
in framed photographs.

Went on holidays,
horse-riding, swimming,
butterfly parks; led us

past mountains,
wind-swept grassland
in his blue sedan.

He dreamt of retiring
in Australia; every day,
a game of golf.

Stopped breathing after
a week in hospital.
Be quiet, they said,

the service’s starting.
In my mother’s dress, I cried
for his jaundiced cheeks,

ill-fitting suit.
Those seaside vacations,
road-trips spent fishing.

Ant Dinner

They circled the light in swarms,
dank planets revolving
around the swaying bulb.

Not understanding their reflections,
they died in a red bowl, dive-bombing
its watery depths.

As they floated on their backs,
we brought dinner
to the wooden table.

My mother, furrowed with exhaustion.
Father, loudly chewing our leftovers.
The spoon sank further in.

On television, a girl wept.
The sun retreating, neighbours wrapped up
a badminton game.

Sternly, they asked why I hadn’t eaten
the boiled fish, crooked vegetables.
I wished they understood.

Vertigo

Monday morning: moist, frosty,
the rattle of garbage men
as they tussle with sacks
of beer cans and cracked eggshells,
frozen on our doorstep.
The bananas are ripening,
begging to be chewed;
shuddering in their leather skins.
In a corner you are folding away
the last of your clothes,
bee-stung by my slumber.

I cringe at the ceiling
as it draws close, then recedes: tidal.
Fearing distances, still believing
the sky might swallow my leap.
An ambulance roars past; I’m fainting.
Your face dissolves into the background,
flattening into a thin, sweet paste.
There’s nothing here but space
and you half-submerged:
blue shirt, grey trousers, blue
on blue.

I try to avoid revealing that I'm a model. It's like informing someone you're a prodigy, when you can only play Twinkle Twinkle Little Star. Or, more realistically, a simplified version of Canon In D. I'm five foot nine. My build can charitably be described as 'slight'. I've given up fighting my slouch; when I'm at a table, my shoulders bend and my arms dangle uselessly. In fact, I can make myself go completely limp.

The truth is I don't belong on runways or magazine covers. I'm not completely unattractive; I have a set of perfect teeth. Though I've never had braces, at least five women have commented on how straight they are. I feel powerful when I'm biting into a tough steak or a particularly robust baguette, like I'm finally realising my potential. I brush them carefully, every night; one by one by one. Still, I'm really more of an actor. Last Monday I was a seasoned golfer. I wore a polo shirt and a blue cap, squinting in the afternoon sun, but maintaining an air of intense concentration. I did it to prove that Vitamin C capsules make you healthy and sportive. And tomorrow I will be a trustworthy insurance agent with a leather briefcase, smiling with my eyes. My photograph, on the back of buses, will remind you that you're covered. Always.

I've begun to understand that beauty terrifies people. My lack of it, my earnest eyes, those teeth, soothe and reassure. If every taxi driver looked like me, you'd never be afraid to enter a cab. I'm the caring father determined to save up for his sprightly children - a girl and boy - you'll want to emulate. These shorts, blinding lights, perspiration forming on my upper lip, secretly trickling past my ears, are nothing like my real life. I live in a studio apartment that smells, almost nauseatingly, like a car. It's about half a mile from where I grew up. The windows are permanently clouded with dust and grime; some days I trace the alphabets of my name, with a burnt-out cigarette. I tell people I can't afford a television, but it's mainly because I dislike recognising myself, even if no one else does.

It's not a bad job. I sympathise with my friend Joe. He's a boy I went to school with; we played football after hours, muddying our ivory shoes. We high-fived a lot and never saw each other cry. His face was doughy, the sort that mothers pinch and roll between their fawning hands. By twenty-five, he'd thinned out, with narrowed, staring eyes, and a moustachioed sneer that strangers wanted to punch. When we both joined the agency, they decided to make him the token pervert. He started out as an unctuous figure offering frightened schoolgirls candy, urging them to enter narrow, pastel-coloured elevators, smiling gleefully. Now he's moved on to portraying anonymous rapists in crime dramas. People know him: his face resides in their subconscious, mocking and threatening, and they instinctively retreat. He laments this as we drink together at midnight, idly bouncing beer cans off my door.

Sal Monella

I started turning green, like fruit
unripening; throat shutting
as my stomach rose and fell.

Bathroom tiles punching my knees
and icy neck, tight ponytail.
Tears dribbling down my cheek.

All night I writhed and moaned,
a tangled eel; dreamt about algebra,
inky mazes, crossword puzzles.

Your arm around my shrinking waist --
tepid water half-spilled, menthol oil
your thumbs rubbed through my belly.

Separation Anxiety

Two weeks isn't long.
You can't grow a baby
or nurse a pine;
postcards take years
to arrive.

Ridiculous, you say
like when I believed
the roof was falling
and the garden,
alight. Silly girl.

But I took a day
to love the angle
in your crooked nose,
four to press my lips
across your taut neck;

and one August month
of summertime,
soaked in each other's
sweat and shame,
felt close to eternity.

At the Coffeeshop

We talked till 3; rats chattered
squeaked, dragged their hind legs
across mottled drain-grates.

Moths powdered your shoulders
as you told me about Nirvana, airports,
death in Africa.

This was night, not a bed of stars,
a benevolent moon: oppressive heat,
a chorus of creeping shadows.

And a man who kicked them
without malice, smoked a cigarette
and made me listen.

Eighteen

We learned to smoke
together, choking in sync
with car exhausts -

gnawing on Pall Malls,
our veins pulsing
Marlboro red.

We lay on brick
expelling smog:
singed our thumbs
to share a spark.

I quit last September,
my body outlawing cigarettes
like a respectable bar.

Your ash continues falling.