R.E.M.
This evening the poetess, first bed
to the left in ward 10A, dreams
I am with child. The line
on the pregnancy test is pink,
the bathroom a nursery blue.
This was her house before the stroke:
a midnight gong, then the blackout.
They say she never woke up.
I am an intruder. The lights are back,
a toothbrush lies on the floor.
On the four-poster, she left her book
open. I slip under the covers and read.
At some point, I must have fallen asleep
and she must have stopped breathing.
We dissolve into mist. In another
woman’s womb, the fetus moves,
sucks its thumb, continues dreaming:
this time a legless horse, Beethoven.
Write About What You Know,
They Say
They Say
You need to get that pip out.
The apple’s rotten from the core.
How many days, knives, dead flies
did it take you to reach
that hot plate on the concept
of self-preservation?
Eventually, you hit someone in the eye:
someone who’ll like it,
someone who’ll complain loudly,
perhaps call the author-ities,
someone who, after several
Venn diagrams, would still not get it
and whatever else
you’ve stuck between your teeth.
Observances of a Domestic Nature
after Botero’s “Man Drinking Orange Juice”, 1987
The door is ajar.
Like his mouth opening to receive juice.
The oranges are sour,
premedicated, watered down.
He complains about the pianist on the second floor.
Wonders if the taste of bitter almonds
turns stray dogs into a sofa.
Ice clinks. In the background, his wife.
He takes a banana, throws it
out the window. He is murderous again.
She scissors through
her dress to make a dishrag.
Pries off the seascape from the wall
with a paring knife.
Her movements are jaded,
cut threads, grenadine.
She never drinks from his glass.
The doorways have eyes
and, under the floorboards, the sound of Keats
reciting death. I’m a city boy now. I want my steak
well-done. Like in the novel where they lit the table
with a silver bullet. As if teeth would bleat
before falling out. As if curry on the candle
fed the wooden stake before it lanced
the heart. Overnight the house steps
into a hooting owl. The moths - what pests -
wear newsprint for their wings. I’ve saved a seat
for the foreign body, the taste of Middle East,
the sting. The sky breaks into several parts:
the hush, the cocoon, the leather strap.
Mrs. D’s Last Letter to Her Son
Beware of the woman who starts her sentences
with “darling,” or pauses halfway through
the door with “You got a light?” She lives
in smoke, drinks heavily on weekends,
studies the capabilities of spongy matter
in captivity, admires the geometric cigars
of Seymour Lipton while drinking iced tea
in a plastic cup. Her breasts are cold sugar lumps,
the cream deftly withheld to the last moment.
Bone is in her eyes, like tunnels where fog
rises between eleven p.m. and midnight.
She lacks foresight when it comes to raising
children, sitting with a spindle in the room
and smoking two packs of Gauloises a day.
Remember the needles, the rendezvous with
nurses, butterflies on her wrist. They say
a body can squeeze itself into a lung,
shed hair like loose pages and survive throat rot.
She is nothing but trouble, a pre-defined dig.
You pay to have her name etched in stone.
***
Arlene Ang
