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Moving People With Words

Poems on the MRT

Ideology by Samuel Lee

 

Standing on a park bench
a boy declares his war on love
and tries to kiss every passing stranger

because the action, having gone through
a series of pointless and random transactions,
would have as much meaning as leftovers
slow dancing in a microwave.

Love is ideology, he chants,
and our shackles eat at our ankles.

Farther away, a balloon animal explodes
in a child's rose-blossom face. Its petals withdraw
into a tight bud of fear and profound longing.

There are only two things on my mind:
how mild the day has been
and how slowly the sun edges its way
down the gaps in the blocks of flats.

Walking beneath the trees, I recall the happiness
my best friend carved onto his face,
with a flint, saying, Yes I have a new girlfriend,
naming this conflation of duty and embarrassment,
conquest and consumerism,
Love, even if it seemed a catalogue
of various disasters to come.

Meanwhile on the television screen
a news presenter, dizzied by passing time,
laughs and reshuffles her papers, and I, too, saw myself
reordering speech to profess something neutral and pleasing.

We pronounce the names of things
vainly anticipating the slightest possibility
that we can slide our fingers down their contours,
understand their shape, manage desire.
We fill them with desecration, colouring them,
making them whole.

Published in A Field Guide to Supermarkets in Singapore (2016)

Samuel Lee (b. 1992) is a poet and art historian based in Singapore. His debut collection, A Field Guide to Supermarkets in Singapore (Ten-Year Series/Math Paper Press, 2016), was the winner of the 2018 Singapore Literature Prize. His work has appeared in Antennae: the Journal of Nature in Visual Culture, Cordite Poetry Review, Yale Literary Magazine, UnFree Verse (Ethos Books, 2017), 11 x 9: Collaborative Poetry from the Philippines and Singapore (Math Paper Press, 2019), and elsewhere.

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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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