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Poems on the MRT

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Orchid (noun, 1) by Mok Zining

 

{waking

in the dark,

appendages scattered

buds

overripe and

sweating

on the pillow,

aerial

root dangling off

the bed’s

edge. one

by one

i re-

collect

the fragments

of my

self. in one

pile

a sepal two

auricles

a belly

button

a vertebra of my

stem.

in

another lie

the joints—these

are the points

of dislocation, the

knees and

the ands and

the eyes

where new

growths stem. when

in my

dream

i opened

an eye

it bloomed,

an orchid.


Published in The Orchid Folios (2020)

Mok Zining is obsessed with random things: orchids, arabesques, sand. The Orchid Folios (Ethos Books, 2020) is her first book. Her work has appeared in Witness Magazine, The Rumpus and the Los Angeles Review of Books, among others. Zining is a recent graduate of the MFA program at the University of Minnesota, where she taught creative writing. She has received a number of awards, including the College of Liberal Arts Fellowship from the University of Minnesota, the Helen G. Scott Prize for Best Critical Essay on American Literature, and an honorable mention from the Academy of American Poets’ James Wright Prize. Zining lives in Singapore, where she is working on a book about sand. She spends most of her free time dancing.

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Poems on the MRT is an initiative by the National Arts Council, in partnership with SMRT and Stellar Ace. Produced by Sing Lit Station, a local literary non-profit organisation, this collaboration displays excerpts of Singapore poetry throughout SMRT’s train network, integrating local literature into the daily experience of commuters. Look out for poems in English, Chinese, Malay, and Tamil in trains on the East-West, North-South and Circle Lines, as well as videos created by local artists and featuring local poets in stations and on trains. The Chinese, Malay, and Tamil poems are available in both the original languages and English. To enjoy the full poems, commuters may read them on go.gov.sg/potm.

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