Lines by Martha Collins

Draw a line. Write a line. There.
Stay in line, hold the line, a glance
between the lines is fine but don't
turn corners, cross, cut in, go over
or out, between two points of no
return's a line of flight, between
two points of view's a line of vision.
But a line of thought is rarely
straight, an open line's no party
line, however fine your point.
A line of fire communicates, but drop
your weapons and drop your line,
consider the shortest distance from x
to y, let x be me, let y be you.

Make Me by Tanya Colley

I am a glowing star, make me the silver planet,

I am a dirty rag, make me the red carpet,

I am a piece of mattress, make me the four-poster bed,

I am a tiny match, make me the raging fire,

I am a hot light bulb, make me the flaming sun,

I am a flake of snow, make me the snow queen,

I am a clear raindrop, make me the colour-filled rainbow,

I am a shivering small girl, make me the powerful giant.

Only the Moon by Wong May

When I was a child I thought
The new moon was a cradle
The full moon was granny's round face

The new moon was a banana
The full moon was a big cake.

When I was a child
I never saw the moon.
I only saw what I wanted to see.

And now I see the moon
It's the moon,
Only the moon, and nothing but the moon.

Coda: Language by Nina Cassian

My tongue - forked like a snake's
but without deadly intentions:
just a bilingual hissing.

Eulogy: Love is not a modulus sign

how will you measure love when it comes to town? you might like to weigh it up with coffee spoons, drinking each mouthful like water, like medicine, a spoonful of sugar. you might like to sit in a corner and mark the daylight that streams in through the window, mark how the sun moves across his face, his eyes. love is not a victory march. you cannot measure it by the number of flags won, you cannot measure it by the number of hearts lost. it cannot be measured by the decibels of sound, the number of chess moves made, the number of times peace has been made. love is not a war. it cannot be fought or won or lost. love is not a science experiment: there can be no trial runs and its hypotheses can never be tested. love is not a graph you can extrapolate forever from. love is not a maths question. there are neither correct nor wrong answers and it cannot be solved in three steps. there is no way to prove it and you cannot verify that one person will always satisfy the equation. there is no equation when 1 + 1 never equals 2.

but love is a great mathematician. love marks the area of a boy walking down clarke quay with you; the volume of his love is the amount of space he takes up. love is in the length of his fingers and the number of seconds his eyes take to trail down your legs. love knows the number of heartbeats you take when he walks past, love watches as your brain slows down and the rest of you goes into overdrive. love alone knows the length of the shadow he casts on your face while you sleep, love sees the width of that chasm that separates you from him. love remembers the number of steps you take away from him, and love knows that when one person is between two others, the hypotenuse of the triangle must always be √2 and hence an impossibility. love knows that the shortest distance from one person to another is not always a straight line, and that some people walk in circles only to find they have never moved from the same spot. and love knows that if you try to differentiate one from the other — there is no way you can integrate them back.

/from Supermango

The Exam by Joyce Sutphen

It is mid-October. The trees are in
their autumnal glory (red, yellow-green,

orange) outside the classroom where students
take the mid-term, sniffling softly as if

identifying lines from Blake or Keats
was such sweet sorrow, summoned up in words

they never saw before. I am thinking
of my parents, of the six decades they’ve

been together, of the thirty thousand
meals they’ve eaten in the kitchen, of the

more than twenty thousand nights they’ve slept
under the same roof. I am wondering

who could have fashioned the test that would have
predicted this success? Who could have known?



/from NYT Learning Network

A Child's Sleep by Carol Ann Duffy

I stood at the edge of my child's sleep
hearing her breathe;
although I could not enter there,
I could not leave.

Her sleep was a small wood,
perfumed with flowers;
dark, peaceful, sacred,
acred in hours.

And she was the spirit that lives
in the heart of such woods;
without time, without history,
wordlessly good.

I spoke her name, a pebble dropped
in the still night,
and saw her stir, both open palms
cupping their soft light;

then went to the window. The greater dark
outside the room
gazed back, maternal, wise,
with its face of moon.

Everyone Sang by Siegfried Sassoon

Everyone suddenly burst out singing;
And I was filled with such delight
As prisoned birds must find in freedom,
Winging wildly across the white
Orchards and dark-green fields; on - on - and out of sight.

Everyone's voice was suddenly lifted;
And beauty came like the setting sun:
My heart was shaken with tears; and horror
Drifted away . . . O, but Everyone
Was a bird; and the song was wordless; the singing will never be done.

Grandfather by Chandran Nair

the seventy six years beneath his eyes
burst like rain, flood my earth with desolation:
his seventy six years have compromised my eyes
into a hardness that grows on me.
the imprint of his frown I wear
without his laughter.

grandfather walks the bunds of seasons
ploughing, sowing and harvesting years.
in drought-stricken months
he wears old age as lightly as his beard,
his smile transcends.

to be born from unlucky seeds,
a friend once wrote, is tragedy;
the curse flows unmuted, immutable -

only the hot stares of the gods persuade the proud.

gods bothered him,
but temples missed his sacrifice.
he found truth, relief, away from divinity,
spacing out years in padi fields,
unfolding particular nuances, lack of attainment.

like the padi stalk, once green, easily bent,
he grew with age, aged to ripened toughness
to resist anger, misfortunes of stricken years
with dignity, unpersuaded.

The Planners by Boey Kim Cheng

They plan. They build. All spaces are gridded,
filled with permutations of possibilities.
The buildings are in alignment with the roads
which meet at desired points
linked by bridges all hang
in the grace of mathematics.
They build and will not stop.
Even the sea draws back
and the skies surrender.

They erase the flaws,
the blemishes of the past, knock off
useless blocks with dental dexterity.
All gaps are plugged
with gleaming gold.
The country wears perfect rows
of shining teeth.
Anaesthesia, amnesia, hypnosis.
They have the means.
They have it all so it will not hurt,
so history is new again.
The piling will not stop.
The drilling goes right through
the fossils of last century.

But my heart would not bleed
poetry. Not a single drop
to stain the blueprint
of our past's tomorrow.

Singapore River by Koh Buck Song

there was a time
it could be said
the old subject
stretched its rule
in the empire
of the easel

now, refreshed,
the lady revels
in another reign,
clear, iridescent

fresh winds have carried
the old tang away
and in this revival
a new mirror
re-projects, rules
the new imagery

The Civil Servant by Roger Jenkins

When surgery’s a necessity, who hesitates?
When it’s an option, well,
that takes some thinking, doesn’t it?
So it was with the river.
we lived with it for years, you see,
its notorious whiff of decay,
the bankside scum and lighter congestion,
the quaint unloading of the boats
a nostalgic reminder of a way of trade
backwatered by containers and computerization.
When the PM said, “In ten years time
let us have fishing in the Singapore River.
It can be done,” well – it had to be.
But how? A labour of Hercules lay before us.
A river is a system fed by many streams;
clean the rivers meant clean most of the island.
A major operation.
When we began The Clean Rivers Campaign
we felt as if the surgeon had cut open the belly
to find the cancer spread through the body.
It involved so many – from environment,
health, sewage, drainage, housing,
pollution control, primary production –
oyou can imagine the problems of co-ordination.
And the result?
Farewell Bugis Street, goodbye Chinatown.
Relocate the bumboats to Pasir Panjang.
Resettle hawkers, close down the pig farms,
rehouse squatters far from their communities.
These were the costs we couldn’t count.
Luckily, the river’s a marvelous patient:
stop the infection and it heals itself.
“After the rains, fresh blood flows in old veins.”
Now the city’s heart pours its cleaner, greener waters
through a body working ever harder,
transformed in the ‘90s into – well,
a human, leisure-friendly environment,
yet incomplete.
The river’s renewal made the body whole
but in the process we misplaced its soul.
We can’t devise an action plan for that,
unfortunately.

Singapore River by Lee Tzu Pheng

The operation was massive;
designed to give new life
to the old lady.
We have cleaned out
her arteries, removed
detritus and silt,
created a by-pass
for the old blood.
Now you can hardly tell
her history.

We have become
so health-conscious
the heart
can sometimes be troublesome.

Mirror by Sylvia Plath

I am silver and exact. I have no preconceptions.
Whatever I see, I swallow immediately.
Just as it is, unmisted by love or dislike
I am not cruel, only truthful –
The eye of a little god, four-cornered.
Most of the time I meditate on the opposite wall.
It is pink, with speckles. I have looked at it so long
I think it is a part of my heart. But it flickers.
Faces and darkness separate us over and over.

Now I am a lake. A woman bends over me.
Searching my reaches for what she really is.
Then she turns to those liars, the candles or the moon.
I see her back, and reflect it faithfully
She rewards me with tears and an agitation of hands.
I am important to her. She comes and goes.
Each morning it is her face that replaces the darkness.
In me she has drowned a young girl, and in me an old woman
Rises toward her day after day, like a terrible fish.

You're by Sylvia Plath

Clownlike, happiest on your hands,
Feet to the stars, and moon-skulled,
Gilled like a fish. A common-sense
Thumbs-down on the dodo's mode.
Wrapped up in yourself like a spool,
Trawling your dark as owls do.
Mute as a turnip from the Fourth
Of July to All Fools' Day,
O high-riser, my little loaf.

Vague as fog and looked for like mail.
Farther off than Australia.
Bent-backed Atlas, our traveled prawn.
Snug as a bud and at home
Like a sprat in a pickle jug.
A creel of eels, all ripples.
Jumpy as a Mexican bean.
Right, like a well-done sum.
A clean slate, with your own face on.

Variations On The Word Sleep by Margaret Atwood

I would like to watch you sleeping,
which may not happen
I would like to watch you
sleeping. I would like to sleep
with you, to enter
your sleep as its smooth dark wave
slides over my head

and walk with you through that lucent
wavering forest of bluegreen leaves
with its watery sun & three moons
towards the cave where you must descend,
towards your worst fear

I would like to give you the silver
branch the small white flower, the one
word that will protect you
from the grief at the center
of your dream, from the grief
at the center. I would like to follow
you up the long stairway

again & become
the boat that would row you back
carefully, a flame
in two cupped hands
to where your body lies
beside me, and you enter
it as easily as breathing in

I would like to be the air
that inhabits you for a moment
only. I would like to be that unnoticed
& that necessary.

Valentine by Carol Ann Duffy

Not a red rose or a satin heart.

I give you an onion.
It is a moon wrapped in brown paper.
It promises light
like the careful undressing of love.

Here.
It will blind you with tears
like a lover.
It will make your reflection
a wobbling photo of grief.

I am trying to be truthful.

Not a cute card or kissogram.

I give you an onion.
Its fierce kiss will stay on your lips,
possessive and faithful
as we are,
for as long as we are.

Take it.
Its platinum loops shrink to a wedding ring,
if you like.
Lethal.
Its scent will cling to your fingers,
cling to your knife.

Merlion by Alfian Sa'at

"I wish it had paws," you said,
"It's quite grotesque the way it is,
you know, limbless; can you
imagine it writhing in the water,
like some post-Chernobyl nightmare?
I mean, how does it move? Like a
torpedo? Or does it shoulder itself
against the currents, gnashing with frustration,
its furious mane bleached
the colour of a drowned sun?
But take a second look at it,
how it is poised so terrestrially,
marooned on this rough shore,
as if unsure of its rightful
harbour. Could it be that,
having taken to this unaccustomed limpidity,
it has decided to abandon the seaweed-haunted
depths for land? Perhaps it is even ashamed
(But what a bold front!)
to have been a creature of the sea; look at how
it tries to purge itself of its aquatic ancestry,
in this ceaseless torrent of denial, draining
the body of rivers of histories, lymphatic memories.
What a riddle, this lesser brother of the Sphinx.
What sibling polarity, how its sister's lips are sealed
with self-knowledge and how its own jaws
clamp open in self-doubt, still
surprised after all these years."

"Yet...what brand new sun can dry
the iridescent slime from the scales
and what fresh rain wash the sting of salt
from those chalk-blind eyes?"

A pause.

"And why does it keep spewing that way?
I mean, you know, I mean..."

"I know exactly what you mean," I said,
Eyeing the blond highlights in your black hair
And your blue lenses the shadow of a foreign sky.
It spews continually if only to ruffle
its own reflection in the water; such reminders
will only scare a creature so eager to reinvent itself."

Another pause.

"Yes," you finally replied, in that acquired accent of yours,
"Well, yes, but I still do wish it had paws."

Sifter by Naomi Shihab Nye

When our English teacher gave
our first writing invitation of the year,
Become a kitchen implement
in 2 descriptive paragraphs, I did not think
butcher knife or frying pan,
I thought immediately
of soft flour showering through the little holes
of the sifter and the sifter’s pleasing circular
swishing sound, and wrote it down.
Rhoda became a teaspoon,
Roberto a funnel,
Jim a muffin tin
and Forrest a soup pot.
We read our paragraphs out loud.
Abby was a blender. Everyone laughed
and acted giddy but the more we thought about it,
we were all everything, in the whole kitchen,
drawers and drainers,
singing teapot and grapefruit spoon
with serrated edges, we were all the
empty cup, the tray.
This, said our teacher, is the beauty of metaphor.
It opens doors.
What I could not know then
was how being a sifter
would help me all year long.
When bad days came
I would close my eyes and feel them passing
through the tiny holes.
When good days came
I would try to contain them gently
the way flour remains
in Time, time. I was a sweet sifter in time
and no one ever knew.