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Moving People With Words

Poems on the MRT

Back Again by Stephanie Chan

 

Five holes in his T-shirt,
the haggard karang guni guy
pushes his bike on the leftmost side
between the double yellow lines,
as taxis slither past him.

I admit I missed your diesel smell.
waking up to hear the mee pok auntie yell
as rush hour traffic on your highway swells
to the rhythms of reversing lorries.

Above, the rain trees roll their eyes.
They know I can’t help but romanticise
everything I see and feel and hear:
it was just yesterday I just returned to you.

I admit I liked that stranglehold
outside Changi Airport cold,
how your sticky arms never seem to let go,
as if you've always known
how I just really want to cuddle.

I want to lie in bed and breathe
you in, hope you won't mind
my faded skin
from all those months I spent
snowed in, all those months spent
trying to blend in: you know I was
only compensating, living so far away.

Will you take me back from
what I've become, taste of English
strangers still on my tongue,
from nights you could only imagine,
smell of American Spirit tobacco
still stuck to all my clothes.
(Believe me when I tell you
I will never start to smoke.)

I want to lie naked in your field
of vision marked STATE LAND,
exposed to the ants and pigeons
and policemen who will quickly
pull me away while you sit and watch
and say why do you have to be so weird?
I told you this would happen.

And I'll say it's a direct action
-slash performance art experiment
I saw in Berlin.

I want to climb all your rambutan trees,
take grassroots polls from citizen monkeys
about the recent traffic jams along the BKE
and how it's affecting their work-life balance.

The monkeys will pat my head and laugh at me. They know my excitement is just temporary, /
that I'm still high on your humidity
and your sweet belacan perfume.

They know that in a week or so, 
your stranglehold will start to dig 
into my throat and the sunshine 
will start to sting: you'll tell me 
I've changed, that my accent's 
gotten strange, and I will remember 
why I left.

But for now, 
when your East Coast coconut palm
does that thing with its fingers 
on the back of the setting sun, 
my wires get crossed
and all memory gets lost, 
and all I can do is watch
as their shapes entwine 
and pull me all the way back in

Published in Roadkill for Beginners (2019)

Stephanie Chan is an award-winning poet, spoken word artist and event producer. A former UK and Singapore National Poetry Slam Champion, she has performed her work across 13 countries. Her debut poetry collection Roadkill for Beginners was published in 2019. She is the founder of Spoke & Bird Poetry, Singapore’s longest-running poetry night.

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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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