- Rambutan Literary

RAMBUTAN
LITERARY
Issue One
journal for Southeast Asian literature and art
cover photo: Koggelavani Muniandy
1
TABLE OF CONTENTS
MASTHEAD
RECOMMENDED PUBLICATIONS
FROM THE EDITOR-IN-CHIEF
ROOTS
Artwork
Poetry
Fiction
Nonfiction
BRANCHES
Artwork
Poetry
Fiction
Nonfiction
CONTRIBUTORS
2
TABLE OF CONTENTS:
ROOTS
ARTWORK & PHOTOGRAPHY
Koggelavani Muniandy
THREE PHOTOGRAPHS
Nasir Nadzir
THREE DRAWINGS
Danna Peña
FOUR PHOTOGRAPHS
Arif Utama
TWO PHOTOGRAPHS
Robyn Angeli Saquin
ONE PAINTING
POETRY
Nica Bengzon
ORIGIN STORIES
SCATTERING
Khairani Barokka
TSUNAMI PILGRIMS
Leon Wing
BLUE FUNK
Kari Astillero
HOUSE OF SPIDERS AND
THEIR COBWEB PRAYERS
Madina Malahayati
MUSLIMS ARE NOT REAL
PEOPLE
3
Drima Chakraborty
STEVENS
Rodrigo Dela Peña, Jr.
BUS
Meerabella Jesuthasan
THE IMPERATORS
Ben Aguilar
THE MANSION
FICTION
Dyasanti Vidya Saputri
AN EXERCISE IN SCARRING
Eve Shi
A DIFFERENT MISTAKE
Andrea Macalino
SWIMMINGLY
Carl Lorenz Cervantes
WHILE THEY REMAIN WITH US
Marc de Faoite
SEED
NONFICTION
Madina Malahayati
GIRLS YOUR AGE
Jan Angelique Dalisay
THE SYMPATHY FLOWERS
Teh Su Ching
SENIOR’S DISCOUNT
Cristina Maria Chiorean
YANGON
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TABLE OF CONTENTS:
BRANCHES
ARTWORK & PHOTOGRAPHY
Jemima Yong
THREE PHOTOGRAPHS
Aster V. Delgado
TWO DRAWINGS, ONE
PAINTING
Kei Franklin
THREE PHOTOGRAPHS
POETRY
Ally Ang
FAITH HEALER
MEMORY
Bobby Sun
NOT YET MY COUNTRY
Mary Alinney Villacastin
WET DIARY OF SOUVENIRS
INCOMPLETS
Alanda Kariza
OUT OF TIME
THE CHANCES WE TOOK
Patricia Policarpio
MONKISH
SAMPAGUITA
THIS ISN'T IT
5
Cassandra Hsiao
ODE TO THE NIGHTMARKET
Benedicta J. Foo
TONIGHT'S BLANKET IS
FRIED BATTERED FISH
Linh Le
WHAT MAKES ME
VIETNAMESE?
FICTION
Sumitra Selvaraj
THE STARLIGHT STUDIO
Rania Putri
A BRIEF RESPITE
Cassandra Hsiao
TANGKAK
NONFICTION
Cassandra Hsiao
PASAR MALAM
Yen-Rong Wong
QUESTIONS OF TASTE,
QUESTIONS OF HOME
6
MASTHEAD
EDITOR-IN-CHIEF
DO NGUYEN MAI
United States
ROOTS
POETRY EDITOR
STEFANI TRAN
Philippines
FICTION EDITOR
KWAN ANN TAN
Malaysia
NONFICTION EDITOR
SAQUINA GUIAM
Philippines
BRANCHES
POETRY EDITOR
CHRISTINE NGUYEN
Canada
FICTION EDITOR
PALOMA VELAQUEZ
United States
NONFICTION EDITOR
ANGEL CRUZ
Canada
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RECOMMENDED
PUBLICATIONS
LONTAR JOURNAL is the world’s only biannual
literary journal focusing on Southeast Asian speculative fiction.
DAGMAY is the literary journal of the Davao Writers
Guild.
LANTERN REVIEW is a journal of Asian American
poetry.
CHA: AN ASIAN LITERARY JOURNAL is
dedicated to publishing quality poetry, fiction, creative nonfiction, reviews and photography & art, with a strong focus on
Asian-themed creative work and work done by Asian writers
and artists.
EASTLIT is a journal and website focused on creative
writing, English literature and art specifically from or
connected to East and Southeast Asia.
THE INSIGNIA SERIES is a blog & anthology
series promoting Asian Fantasy books and writers.
8
POLYCHROME INK is a literary magazine
devoted to celebrating diversity in literature.
DEAD KING MAG aims to prioritise writers who
continue to survive precariousness.
THE FEM LIT MAG publishes diverse, inclusive,
feminist literature, interviews, art, and blog posts.
THE ASWANG PROJECT is an online
publication of Filipino mythology and folklore.
9
FROM THE EDITOR-INCHIEF
The lack of Asian literature and art in general has always felt
othering to me — however, in an already undiverse creative
scene, the lack of prominent Southeast Asian creatives within
the Asian literary community struck me as a reflection of not
only the alienation of Southeast Asians from dominant
Western society, but also the alienation of Southeast Asians
from an Asian community so influenced by East Asian culture.
With the creation of Rambutan Literary, I hoped to help fill
the gaps previously disallowed Southeast Asian creatives.
Rambutan as a name for this journal seemed so
quintessentially Southeast Asian, as the rambutan fruit is not
only grown all throughout both mainland and maritime
Southeast Asia, but also is a fruit less commonly affiliated with
East Asia. At first glance, the rambutan seems inedible, a
daunting task just to open with its vibrant red color and many
spikes, but the rambutan flesh inside is a lovely off-white, and
is soft, slightly tangy, and sweet. Just as the rambutan fruit is
strange and formidable, the region, too, seems to those
unknowing a place rough and is a place often grouped
together with the rest of the continent. But Southeast Asia is
10
not East Asia, nor is it South Asia, though both have
influenced the region.
Many Southeast Asian peoples have had a strong tradition of
storytelling - through verse, through song, through dance,
through life itself. It would only be fitting to create a space to
showcase Southeast Asian literature, especially with how
diverse and expressive mainland, maritime, and diaspora
communities are.
I sincerely hope that Rambutan Literary will become a place
for Southeast Asian literature to flourish just as Southeast
Asian people have managed to survive and prosper despite
perpetual conflict and suppression. I do wish for Rambutan
Literary to become a home for Southeast Asian literature and
its writers, a place where branches and roots may meet
uninterrupted, and thrive.
This is a dream coming into fulfilment—the hope that both
branches and roots can be reunited in harmony.
Do Nguyen Mai
Editor-in-Chief
11
ROOTS
Homelands of Mainland &
Maritime Southeast Asia
12
Koggelavani Muniandy
13
Koggelavani Muniandy
Koggelavani Muniandy is a freelance photographer whose forte is
capturing portraits. Her photos were featured in an international arts
event by Kakiseni in 2012 and her portraits have also been featured
in Parenthood Magazine. She is working on a book of short stories
accompanied by her photographs. She is also the co-founder of
GoodKids, a social enterprise.
Koggelavani has six years of photography experience, developed
through her global travels. She enjoys capturing portraits of common
folk going through their daily lives, which is usually regarded as
mundane. She believes that there is a story behind each of these
individuals and aims to deliver these stories through her lens for the
rest of the world to see. Her work can be viewed at koggelavani.com
Koggelavani Muniandy
14
ORIGIN STORIES
Nica Bengzon
1.
Noun.
The cessation of all bodily functions
necessary to sustain life. Causes
include biological aging, predation,
malnutrition, disease, homicide,
starvation, dehydration, accidents,
trauma, terminal injury. Bodies
of living organisms begin
to decompose shortly after. Commonly
considered a sad, unpleasant
or fearful occasion.
2.
Stoppage of heartbeat, pulse
and breathing. Most organs—the eye,
the kidney—remain alive,
and can be used for transplantation.
15
3.
The degeneration of tissues
in the brain, followed by
the failure of most organs. These
cannot be used for transplantation.
Rigor has set in.
4.
And the Lord said unto Moses,
Tell your people to mark the blood
of a lamb above their doors, and I
seeing the blood will pass over you,
and not suffer the destroyer to enter.
5.
Death came airborne into the world
when lightning first cracked open
the egg of the sky, spilling
an oily black rain of snakes.
6.
The end of the world is hidden
in a triangle of ocean, into which
entire cities have disappeared.
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7.
No one knows the name
of the fruit anymore, but rarely someone
will have dreams of its sweetness, of the garden
and the swords of angels.
8.
In some mythologies, the first thing
to die is a man with an infant son
in his arms dancing backward into the sea,
is a king’s beautiful daughter, is the youngest
and most beloved of the ancient gods.
9.
A boy in striped pajamas.
A robed skeleton on horseback
who speaks in capitals, drinks tea,
adopts daughter, names a son-in-law,
gives his manservant Sundays off.
A smiling girl with a black umbrella.
Brad Pitt. David Bowie. Your boyfriend.
Anyone who wears a human face,
goes by a nickname, speaks.
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10.
The Lord said, I have already saved
the good, all those who never truly
belonged down here. What will we do
now? It will come to us.
11.
In the oldest days of the world
Bathala could chase Death
down to the point of a spear.
Bathala could drive it into
the body of an animal—wild hen,
or dog, or boar—blood beating
in a thing of living flesh.
12.
The truth is
that it was a jar, not a box.
The truth is it was beguiling
as the woman, sloping
like a pair of hips, sapphire
and rose quartz
and jasper like so many eyes
shining out of the lid.
Gathered at the bottom
18
we find hope pooling
under the dark.
13.
We bury our loves dreaming
one day, a century hence,
they will return as trees.
19
Nasir Nadzir
Nasir Nadzir
20
Nasir Nadzir is 27 years old and is from Kepala Batas,
Pulau Pinang, Malaysia. Nasir Nadzir has been making
artwork based on endangered wildlife in Malaysia and
aimed at advocating for wildlife conservation. It started
as experimental drawing, but throughout the subject
studies, learned what happened to most of the
endangered animals. Even if they survived extreme
deforestation, a lot of them were mutilated and killed by
locals. Nasir Nadzir believes in change and really hopes
their artwork can help raise awareness on the severity of
this issue.
21
Nasir Nadzir
SCATTERING
Nica Bengzon
My brother is made of light.
I have known this since he was big enough
to run, since I was old enough to fear
for what I’d find beneath his skin
should he fall and scrape a knee.
My brother looks to his older sister
for a knowledge that stands against
all his questions. He is young enough
driven by nothing heavier
than a hunger for the world.
Why are the sea and the sky blue
are there more colors than the human eye
refracts back to us, how light are birds
that the tides of air can lift them
how did the universe begin. It doesn’t matter
that I can’t get the science straight, only that I speak
22
with a certainty he can measure. Light is so delicate
it hits the air and scatters into all its component colors.
A clear cloudless day-time sky is blue
because molecules in the air scatter
more blue light from the sun than red.
When we look towards the sun at sunset, we see red
and orange because the blue light has scattered
out and away from the line of sight.
But I don’t how old my brother is
when he discovers what he is made of.
It slips out of him a confession, one night
in the living room, over a bowl of chips
a video game we fight together on. His fingers tap
square, square, triangle. The Chinese princess
onscreen aims a kick, legs like willow branches
roundhousing down a line of footsoldiers.
They are computer-generated identical.
They dissolve bloodlessly against the ground
too digital to stain her shoes. She wears a purple
silk sheath dress and a golden phoenix in her hair
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and it is half-crown and half-statue
and the dust of battle does not settle on it.
We cannot sleep. At 3 AM, these virtual bodies feel more solid
than the ones we sit in, crunching away at potato chips
trying to make sound happen. My brother asks me why
must I inhabit this body. Why am I not a winged creature,
rising hollow-boned into the scattering blue
and am I so hollow the air will scatter me.
I do not tell him it cannot be verified
that I have no way to logic him out of his body
and into the princess, to overwrite his long arms
with wings. I do not tell him we aren’t digital anymore.
This isn’t the China of our video games
where winning wars is a matter of hand-eye
coordination, depth perception, precise little pushes
of buttons—where we can stand an army of one
against a thousand generics, where phoenixes nest
in our hair. I do not tell him I have no knowledge
to armor you with, no quicksilver insight
into how we might learn to own ourselves.
24
What I have for you are measurements—mass
and density, figures to mark the human form as
too heavy for the sky. You would need oceans of it
to break against. You would need wings for miles.
25
Danna Peña is a constant traveler from the Philippines. She
regularly steps out of her boundaries and immerses herself in
everything that gives her inspiration, may it be in the form of
reaching the peaks of mountains or simply by perusing thoughtprovoking books.
Roots (2016)
Taken in Las Casas Filipinas de Acuzar, a heritage resort that showcases
the history and craftsmanship of 18th-century Philippines.
Danna Peña
26
Danna Peña
27
TSUNAMI PILGRIMS
Khairani Barokka
We seek out pain in lurid glimpses—
Bent palm, shell from Lhok Nga,
Where waves hit the treetops
And deluged the cement plant.
Near the leftward curve of the bay,
A marooned ship’s chemical bullion
Leaching out into the Indian.
Thinking –
I must want to sell these things in little jars.
Hone memories tongue-wrapped for relatives, repasts,
Parsed words and round vowels,
Tasting like rawness and saltwater.
We wrap in plastic an oblong
Displayed for the vendors
Of foible as goodness,
And follow others’ nightmares here,
To the sea.
28
Danna Peña
29
Moonrise Kingdom (2016)
Shot on a boat ride at dusk, traveling back to Maripipi Island from
Sambawan Island.
Heaven State (2015)
The peaceful waters of Nagsasa Cove, located in Zambales,
Philippines.
Cul-de-Sac (2014)
Mountains that were affected by the lava of Mount Pinatubo’s
infamous eruption in 1991.
Danna
Peña
30
BLUE FUNK
Leon Wing
Blue,
the lighter shade of night,
It rips
apart when the birds
arrow to reach light.
Its sludge pulls me
Apart, as Vishnu
me anew.
31
Taken December 2015 in a deforested land in Latinangor. The
people deforested a forest to create a farm for their family. Which is
important, feeding your family or saving nature?
Arif Utama
32
Arif Utama
A moth who loves the light just like a mother loves her child. They
could suffer, but they'd endure suffering because it has a meaning. To
bring happiness to each other.
Arif Utama is from Bandung, and is writer, a thinker, a graphic
designer, photographer, a videographer, and public relations
student.
33
HOUSE OF SPIDERS AND
THEIR COBWEB PRAYERS
Kari Astillero
‘See, the house, mother said, once
was lived by spiders. Do not cross the street.’
Like lightning, my eyes opened.
I was dreaming.
It’s 6:37 in the morning
I think it is going to rain here.
The window’s open as if an open book—
your mama’s arms inviting
you— come, read me.
Something formless enters my room.
A dead or wind. Or perhaps, they are alike.
34
The flapping of curtains begins
the way pages are stirred by a sudden
brush of air. Somewhere,
they are always lost.
Across the road is a house
the color of wheat field, your
grandma’s face, unquenched mouth.
Every day, its paint pales
away— the dying of light.
Sometimes at night I hear sounds like
of a sewing machine. Or spiders
talking incessantly. Threads & threads
like men chanting for abundance of
rain and sun— more, more, more.
A language the opposite
35
of another language.
I sit on my bed and watch
the overcast heavens mourn again
as if a lover in a graveyard.
Today, let rain and wind dance,
woman, a deep-ocean colored dress
waves the way surges do during
storm—
36
MUSLIMS ARE NOT
REAL PEOPLE
Madina Malahayati
after the trending of #StopIslam in twitter
never knew that my religion was a disadvantage.
my mouth, an imprint of fifteen years spent at morning lebaran feasts
forehead a mountain carved out from thousands of sujuds and
palms worn out from silahturahmis. choking on soda
after thirty moon-roundabouts of hunger.
not bloodshed.
alright, i know
muslims are bad people. with so many heads decapitated
our allahu akbar roaring as red splits on dusty grounds, verses of The
Big A
telling us to fight in Their way, because it is our duty, our jihad
how can normal muslims exist, right?
muslims who are out here watching their life slip through their fingers,
muslims
with a stack of unread books, ballpoint ink-stained fingers, paint
smeared on cheeks
37
muslims who are only themselves with a can of beer and twelve stubs
of cigarettes down
whose prayer mats thrown to the back of their closet; muslims that
only remember al-fatihah
and only that, never doing salat for two months because they can
never bother,
mouth rotten with the duas they never say
muslims, muslims like humans,
don't exist in your head, i think.
YOU SAY: So if that's the case, where is all the Muslim outcry?
I SAY: WE ARE LOUD, THANK YOU VERY MUCH, my voice is
hoarse and my throat is dry and i feel like i'm guzzling down acid
repeating this like a broken record player saying, saying that we the
majority are sorry for our hideous minority, we're sorry, we're sorry,
why does this feel so repetitive all of a sudden i am not supposed to
apologize for something i didn't do i'm sorry i'm sorry–
but then, the reality is here: that i get to log out of this all
and this flesh made out of blood and clay is real.
in another land i am killed.
38
STEVENS
Drima Chakraborty
Four years ago, there was no train station here.
No ripping bus stops straight out of the ground,
no fencing up the street, no tunnel boring machinery,
just the unabating, unashamed chatter of schoolgirls.
The McDonald’s, however, was there already.
Four years ago, there was no train station here,
but there was always a girl.
The one with her hair tied in a ponytail,
the one whose eyes shone brown and amber,
jade and gold in the light.
The one whose beauty the hideous
blue dress managed not to sully (just this once).
She was reading a book so intently,
and of course,
of course it had to be your favourite book:
your heart was weak and life was cruel that way.
And when she looked up and smiled at you, you knew,
there was always a girl.
39
Four years ago, there was no traffic jam on this side of the road.
Praying to reach school before the bell rang,
failing and being given demerit points,
getting off two bus stops early and
still getting there before the bus did, was reserved
for the side with the rich kids lined up in their flashy cars.
The journey that took you an hour four years ago,
could be completed in half the time, but
four years ago, there was no train station here.
Four years ago, there were boys here.
Smelly, sweaty boys, trying their luck in the McDonald’s.
Girls casually moving to another table when the boys
got too rowdy. But there was still a girl. Your girl.
The kind with the short hair, the backwards snapback,
the diamond smile. With better luck than all the boys combined.
The anonymous confessions, the teachers worried about
the rampant lesbianism of the cohort but still giving an award
for the best-dressed girl in pants (Miss Smarty Pants? Really?)
at prom. In that tuxedo, or maybe in a ball gown,
there was always a girl.
Four years ago, there was no train station here.
“Take the Stevens Road exit please, thank you.”
Four years ago, there was still the school on Dunearn Road.
Forty years ago, there was the school on Emerald Hill,
40
And heaven knows where it was a hundred and twenty years ago.
Four years ago, there was the amazing mee pok,
the swings in the courtyard, and the uniform inspections.
And there was always, always a girl
who had your heart
on 190 Dunearn Road.
41
Robyn Angeli Saquin is a Filipino visual artist currently
pursuing a degree in Information Design in the Ateneo de
Manila University. She has previously been published in
Heights Vol. LXII no.3 and Vol. LXIII no. 1.
“Peek is a painting separated in three parts, depicting the sun setting
over Las Piñas City. It was painted when I was living in Xi'an, China,
during my high school years. There, the sky would often be grey and
cloudy, and the towering skyscrapers and apartment buildings would
be obstructive anyway, making it difficult to watch the sunset. The
times the sky did clear and the sun stood out in its full glory were
magnificent, but it was hard to compare it to the Philippines.
The painting is based on a photograph I took during a summer I
stayed in the Philippines. I sought to bring my country's sky to China
and to share it with those around me, even if we could only peek at it
from afar and through photos.”
BUS
42
Rodrigo Dela Peña, Jr.
Hours after father was cremated, I boarded
a bus bound for the capital, about half
a day away with brief stopovers in open-air
restaurants that reeked of urine, galvanized
roofs corroding in patches. It was high
summer, the vista that whizzed by the window
bone-dry, washed by the glare of equatorial
light. Rows of squat buildings, abuzz with
people holding plastic bags, soon to become
detritus of a small town. Houses whose concrete
fences had been spiked with the glint of broken
bottles. Then the land presented itself,
single-minded in its breadth. Fields tilled
with corn and sugarcane, crops on the verge
of harvest. In the far distance, brushstroke
outlines of the Sierra Madre, as though
the eye can only capture the faintest
hint of—what to call it: the divine? Ineffable
43
force of which we are only an echo?
The mind galloping across the landscape
as the asphalt road ribboned out ahead
and beyond. And after the trickle of hours,
the gloaming. Factories shutting down, headlights
flickering from the approach of vehicles.
The errant city encroaching like cancer,
composing and decomposing. What goes
on gives way, the sky passing through gradients
of blue to black. I wanted to say
that I’ve reached my destination
but the window kept shifting from one
scenery to the next. The bus hurtled
towards the terminal, my face
a mask floating on the neon-streaked glass.
THE IMPERATORS
Meerabelle Jesuthasan
italicize me like one of your malaysian marxists
44
quixotic on your tongue
roll me out like roti under palm.
appropriate and recreate me
sit straight, and breathe my bindi in.
decolonize my cartilage,
gentrify my collar bones,
deny me a cemetery and let’s really squabble about it.
take me truly to asia,
and let me be reviled in it.
cry me a rebellion
prosecute me
weep well over my spilling milk.
fave me
add me
adore me, please
pour out my granola and torch me with disdain.
45
THE MANSION
Excerpts from the As-Yet Unfinished Poetic
Sequence Into the Earth
Ben Aguilar
Count the Steps
Oro: Ten from the path up to the front porch, and another
twelve leading to the second floor
Plata: lost in the fire. The attic is now nonexistent except in
the pictures.
Mata: Find me here.
46
What Do You Know Of Stories
The Don had this mansion made for his wife
and thirteen children, but this fountain was not here
when the Japanese came. You ask me
how I know: were you there when this mansion
was burning? I say nothing—
I read it on a sign somewhere here.
We sit on the Carnegie belvedere. I watch you
watch the water arc over the sun now balanced
on the tip of a stalk of sugar cane, the weight
of all the light in this field on a shaft
that a bolo has just now felled. You run your hands
over the etchings on the pillar beside you
without thought. They say the Don had to mix thousands
of raw eggs’ whites into the cement to make these
walls smooth. I would tell you what I think
but I know what you would say. Now the farmhands
gather the sugar cane to load into the back of a truck,
and the fountain rustles on, the water runs the sun through,
47
splashing light on your dress, splashing water on
everything else. Let me tell you what I think:
I think tourists smoothed these walls,
running their hands over them over and over
looking for something they couldn’t find
in the rest of the house: another fault, another story,
maybe more signs. Someone I don’t know somewhere
shuts the fountain down. The truck passes;
the crunching gravel is new here,
and how would I know except if I’d been
here before, you asked me how I knew.
Now the fountain spits out a last jet,
and the water now rises and
falls in slow motion,
the sun now resting on nothing, hanging
in the sky, pulling everything up with its rays;
except the canes, still fallen, and the farmhands,
still bowing to pick up what another struck down,
I know what you’ll say—
but lie down right there. Don’t mind the dust.
Look at how these etchings
48
become M’s facing each other, the initials
of the Don and his wife, forming two roofs of houses
turned on their sides.
Perhaps if you keep feeling their edges like that
then someday their names will be
smoothed as well.
49
Similes
As when the Japanese, who heard stories
of a mansion made of stone and hard
wood in the middle
of a cane field,
a mansion so vast that it could house
four hundred strong
if they slept
side-by-side,
with one entrance and enough space
for munitions,
supplies,
and the war flag;
and upon finding the building completely incinerated
and roofless, except for the pillars of stone;
so my grandfather, telling that story,
recounting with fervor how
as a boy, listening in from
the field, and himself
knowing a bit of that foreign tongue,
heard the lieutenant let out a cry
of disbelief and vexation
so poignant—
50
and now, in his age, forgetting
the words that were
in that scream,
is himself frustrated
to no end—
and which one of us children,
was it, listening at his feet,
who whispered
to the ghosts
in between,
so.
51
What Do You Know of Stories
__________________________
1
In 1935 President Quezon conferred upon General Douglas
MacArthur: a gold baton and a state dinner.
2
Weapons of the Philippine arsenal.
52
__________________________
3
Most Filipino dressmakers could copy dresses from just a
picture without surrendering their sense of propriety. The
Filipinos were so good at this that one tribe learned to weave
their dreams; this was how General MacArthur’s new uniform
was pieced together from talisay leaves.
4
This was how the Philippine flag was made.
5
Observe how this in turn is green-less.
53
__________________________
6
God, how many of ‘em do you reckon there are?
54
__________________________
7
You were right.
8
The more reasonable complaints that reached the Peninsula
were answered
9
like this.
10
But you cannot do away with the apparel of sacristy,
11
in much the same way that the crowd of the Tagalog masses
witnessed the death of three priests,
12
with only two-thirds of them martyred, statistically speaking.
55
__________________________
13
in effect, sacrilege is a question of consensus.
56
__________________________
14
All title and claim of title, which you may have had at the
time of the conclusion of this article to any and all islands in
memory lying outside the lines of
57
__________________________
15
this poem, is ceded to history.
16
It is said that Corregidor was the last.
58
__________________________
17
Elpidio Quirino once gave a speech. “There is something
young men do not know. To tear a monkey from a tree you
must lull it to sleep. Blow into its face gently.
18
and as its eyes close pry its fingers from the branch.”
19
A boy is old enough, but tonight it is his shift, there is cash at
the gas station.
20
He is listening.
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__________________________
21
It is currently disputed, but some sources say he still is.
Stories
How could I forget. The tree was in the tower. Somehow the
tree grew itself inside. As a spine. It watched the proceedings
from this vantage point. But first a sapling at the window.
Before that a seed shat from a bird. Now as a sapling
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watching the gardener wake up just before sunrise to trim the
hedgerows. The bicycle vendor rides past. Runs his hands
along the wrought-iron fence. Passes something to the
gardener. The gardener passes something back. What this is
cannot be seen at this point from this point. Perhaps an amulet
or a stone travesty. A bullet. Something the size of a fist
unfolds. An origami rose riddled with ink at the foot of the
tower. A few branches later and the mansion is on fire. The
townspeople watch from empty coffins stacked on roofs of
square houses. One of them says a flood is coming. Swift and
weightless. He takes a swig of brandy and throws the bottle at
a bird’s nest. The bird rocking back and forth like a refinery of
needs. A forest god sheds a tree for a tear somewhere. The
disaster itself takes some time to get here. Paced by the speed
of dull sound, the bird speaks. Tells you from the branch it is
sitting on the true history of this tower. This history fits in a
single speech. And this entire speech has been your birthright.
61
AN EXERCISE IN SCARRING
Dyasanti Vidya Saputri
When he says I will never leave you, is it a promise or a
confession? You see, people often mistake one for the other. It's
supposedly in the tone. On average it's most likely a promise,
but soft enough with the perfect tender staredown, fingers
brushing lightly across your temple and his lashes dancing in
the wind—it becomes an earnest plea of guilt, similar to how
your third grade dentist told you No, dear, it’s not going to
hurt but deep down you knew he was lying because Father
was awkwardly cringing at the side and the assistant had
cradled a box of candies and left it by the desk. You cried, two
front teeth gone, the air current attacking the roof of your
mouth and instead of pain you felt iciness between your
canines.
Your second heartbreak was your the greatest pain. You were
together for a little over 3 years before the bathroom mirror
bulbs went out and he stopped coming through the front door.
Instead of numbing your lips the chill bore right through your
skull and bones this time, leaving cold bites that felt more like
small bursts of flames than ice prickling at your skin—more
62
anger compared to ache. A few months later you learned that
when the promise breaks, the illusion dies with it.
And the first? You don’t remember much about the first; it
wasn’t worth it.
So what would you do if someone takes you by the hand only
to scrape their nails against your palms; blood and scars as
their heart goes fonder? All options can be narrowed down to
two: let go, or let them.
Neither would get you to the winning side.
Mother always did remind you about losing gracefully.
63
A DIFFERENT MISTAKE
Eve Shi
One morning my husband would wake up to find me
gone, along with my wings. Already I could hear him calling
my name, the empty bedroom swallowing his voice. Then,
galvanized, he would fling the wardrobe doors open. His hand
reached for the caramel-colored gift box behind his socks,
where he'd kept the iridescent shawl.
Have you known all along it is there, Wulan? Dropping
the box to the floor, he straightened up. His gaze strayed to
the bedhead, as if he expected to see the shawl draped over
it. Why do you have to leave? Have I been unkind to you?
And yet it had never been about him. It was all about
soaring to the sky, the shawl a gossamer weight across my
shoulders. The air was murkier now than it was a hundred
years ago, but I would always take joy in flight. My sisters and
I loved nothing more than the wind in our hair, the kiss of
water on our warm skin.
Once, a human stole my shawl, forcing me to stay on
earth with him. During those years, I dreamed of treetops, of
flying in the midst of sunshowers. As soon as I discovered
64
where he hid my shawl, I flew back to my sisters. Since then,
centuries had passed, tinged with our memories of clear lakes,
the soft, bobbing shapes of sampans at twilight.
Recently, out of curiosity, I searched for the shawl thief's
descendants. One of them worked at the Jakarta Stock
Exchange. Like his ancestor, he was persuasive, a smooth
talker. And, unlike him, startlingly handsome—never believe
fairy tales when they tell you all the characters are goodlooking.
The first time I walked into the man's life, I was a
neighbor in his apartment building. We chatted, went to cafes
together, and gradually met more often. His eyes disappeared
into lines when he laughed, which I found most charming. My
head fitted snugly into his shoulder, and he never dismissed my
shopping trips as girly or money-draining. Five months after
we met, he proposed to me.
Only one of my sisters came to the wedding reception,
claiming to be my sole living relative. My other sisters refused
to—their exact words—play along with my antics. They believed
I was about to hurt an innocent person.
Are you familiar with the names Jaka Tarub and
Nawangwulan? I asked the man a day later.
65
He shrugged. Outside, it was another humid Jakarta
night, with the promise of rain hovering behind dark clouds.
Soon enough the humidity would give way to thunderstorms
and seasonal floods.
They're people from a legend, he said.
Well, I said, congratulations, you've just married a legend.
My shawl wrapped around my arms, I smiled at him and
floated above the floor. His face went ashy, and for a moment
I thought he would bolt. As I explained, his color improved, but
not by much.
It took him three full days to recover. On the first day he
skipped work, pleading high fever. I sat next to him as we
watched TV, until he no longer stiffened when I leaned against
him. Neither of us ever mentioned who I was again.
A month into our marriage, my shawl went missing. I
wasn't too bothered; it had a scent I could easily track down.
What did concern me was the fact that my husband felt any
need to hide it.
Of course he does, huffed Nawangsari, my sister who
came to the wedding. You can literally fly away from him! Any
human would be worried!
66
Contrary to what you girls think, I replied, I'm not toying
with his feelings. I'm giving him a new perspective. The
relationships he'll have after I'm gone will be much more
meaningful, because he'd work hard to make them last. And
he'd make sure the other person is not another immortal.
Nawangsari rapped her knuckles against her forehead.
Wulan, you are unbelievably dense! He's more likely to
become sad and blame himself. Even if he wouldn't, you've no
right to do this. What's the reason, anyway? Revenge?
Later, sipping chilled tea from the fridge, I mulled over
the word. The shawl thief had lived so long ago that, in my
mind, his face had thawed into a haze. His thievery no longer
irritated me; I had no intention to hurt anyone he was related
to. But perhaps my sisters were right, and I was doing exactly
that.
I agreed to marry my husband because he was wonderful
company. I enjoyed having him to share meals and sing at the
karaoke with. Still, even if he were no longer here, I'd be able
to go on. But what if it was me who went away? Would he be
devastated—or enraged and take refuge in his rage, call me
names and forget the good times we had?
Both possibilities were unsavory, so I left before his
feelings could take root. Or, Nawangsari said, before he
67
decides you're dangerous. Then he may do something foolish,
like tell someone else or call an exorcist. We don't want that,
Wulan. Let humans think that women like us are extinct.
It was all right; he would do just fine. He was too strong
to get crushed by my departure. And he shouldn't suffer for
long from my attraction to him—which wouldn't have existed
had it not been for his ancestor. But, just to be on the safe side,
some nights I'd hover outside his window; if only to check that
he was content, safe, and hopefully had found a new love.
68
SWIMMINGLY
Andrea Macalino
Many years later when they left the office people didn’t
know what to do with all the fish. Their manager had been to
an international office once1, where all along one wall ran an
aquarium, bluer than any sky, with rarefaction so brilliant that
the water seemed a creature itself, the fish mere ornaments in
its hair. When he came back from the conference the
manager2 did what he could; their numbers were falling and
1
They knew that he knew—everyone knew it was just a matter of time before they closed
the Manila branch down—before people in the international office, even, started letting
people go all around the globe, because globalization meant fewer people, and they
needed only so many eyes to stare lustfully at their fish; but for the meanwhile the bigger
bosses with their white beards and tired eyes chatted with this man about the good old
days, and while they did, they almost felt a pang of pity not for him, but for the cruelty
of their younger selves.
2
As a child he had been scolded by his mother on the projects he fell madly in love with.
One summer he had wanted to cover an entire wall of his bedroom with glowing sticky
stars, but when they fell off without wishes and he stuck them back on with masking tape
and they fell back off they left marks on the plaster that, she complained, she had
lovingly picked in mint-green for her only child; and six months after he had developed a
knack for rock climbing and begged his father for all the gear that slowly ate up his
room, until a sprained wrist made him lazy and he settled for comic books, which, on the
year he moved into a boarding house to attend college his mother sold to a newspaperslash-junkshop for which, aged 18, he wept for late at night in his lowly cot on the third
floor while his roommates smoked up.
69
morale was going down with it. Outside, the Manila-envelope
spirit of their office was becoming less and less visible. A corner
office with Doric columns could easily stun a child, but in his
last few years alive the manager realized he was experiencing
again that feeling, of coming to a playground and seeing
papier-mâché instead of sturdy see-saws and giant slides.
Every day he went to the office, and every day he shook the
feeling off, the one that said a giant fist was about to tear
through the office windows, dirty with encrusted pollution and
mildew. Buying one small aquarium, he believed, bought him
just one more day. He was putting on a brave face. He asked
his secretary to research into which kinds of fish thrived in
bowls, which variety wouldn’t be able to stand another even in
a larger aquarium. Which brands of fish flakes were the best.
Then when most of his questions had been answered he went
about the office scattering bowls and aquariums everywhere.
Teetering over a crumbling lounge countertop. Too near the
soap dispenser at the common sink outside the lavatories. On
Janice’s already crowded desk. On the row of shelves with old
magazines and company flyers when they were still relevant to
the business. It took him several rearrangements to find
whatever suited his internal, aquatic feng shui. He wondered
why the dream in his mind always looked cerulean, and the
one in the office always pathetic.
70
Come one Monday morning, Janice’s desk became
flanked by two bowls with betta fish, blue-black and violetyellow, both wielding sword-faces, more suspicious and
snobbish than ever Janice3 herself was. And if the sheet on her
desktop said the man in a drab jacket who looked as though
he had come straight from 1997 or the woman with the bad
perm from a Koreanovela had an appointment with her boss4,
she simply had them sign the logbook and left them much to
their own devices with the following instruction: “Knock on the
door and if he says come in, go on in, and if he doesn’t
answer, do it again. If he says he’s busy, sit back down and try
again in a few more minutes. I’ve got lots of deliverables today
and as long as you’ve logged yourself in I can’t help you
much, so there you have it. Truly sorry.” And instead of hitting
3
She was sleeping with the manager’s twenty-one year-old son, because she had just
turned thirty and what the hell, she’d always been curious about that movie starring a
young, blonde Maggie Smith where she proclaimed to her girls and her colleagues that
she was at her prime, and though Janice didn’t have a bevy of schoolgirls to whom she
could preach about the evils of Fascism, she settled for madness with a man she
considered a boy.
4
One day soon, they would be gone. They would stop coming to this dilapidated box
of an office and find what they thought may be better companies, both people and
institutions; he dreamed of polo-barongs and glass elevators, and she dreamed of
throwing around words like “catching up” and “brunch,” never again part-time saleslady,
never again errand girl, never again eyeing Janice and wondering where she bought her
steel-blue pumps and how she had treated the saleslady who had had to bow down
and fit them on her feet.
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“Like” on the face of her ex-boyfriend’s new baby like her other
self wanted her to, she started working on the liquidation sheet
that had been due last week, steadily working for ten minutes
before she once again rewarded herself with the torture of
looking at the child’s rosy cheeks and small, curled fingers,
thinking that such an individual could just as easily have
quickened in her womb5.
She never bothered anymore to knock on his door on behalf of
the waiting appointees. They never got what they wanted
anyway, or if they did, they always realized that the gimmicks
they wanted were lacking in imagination to begin with. That
what they had initially imagined as brilliant really had the
same charm as handwritten signs on electric poles
(WANTED LABANDERA, WEDNESDAYS AND
SATURDAYS. URGENT HIRING!), the kind suspiciously
written in black permanent marker and wedged in beside
whatever scrap of wall was not currently demanding lady
bedspacers or offering Wi-Fi and bunk beds. The manager,
after the initial wave of his fish craze, had donned a
considerable, five-to-seven-hour-a-day passion for new clients,
5
She liked the betta fish. She liked that they gave her less space than she needed to
transcribe her notes, so scribbling minutes down took on a particular urgency: Against this
crowded desk and inside this dilapidated building my hand must fly across the page and
take down what Mr. Mercado said about finances and why the senior graphic artist
wants to resign and why he just doesn’t care anymore.
72
whether walk-in or hopelessly trusted ones, so that eventually
he could build an entire aquarium for a wall. But whenever he
laid his eyes on a flimsy memorandum of agreement or price
quotations next to the office bills and employee memos he
had to sign or pay, he realized he wanted out of the whole
goddamn mess. All of a sudden he longed not for a slightly
better office but for the long walls of an endless aquarium
inside the comfort of an office that wanted to be a hotel that
wanted to be a home that wanted to be a mental prison, but
sometimes he had a recurring dream where he would drown
his perfectly hardboiled head, Murakami-style, into the
rectangular aquarium behind his desk where four large bubble
eye goldfish bobbled frantically.
Once a month he would have that dream, and on those
nights he would get up for glass of water to find that his son
had bought him another small bag of those colorful plastic
stones for the bottom of an aquarium or fish bowl; it would be
4AM and the young man would have just gotten home from
his job at the call center. He would peer out of his room and
nod to his dad and say, “I’m having another round of
insomnia, Pa,” as though it were a drink he was paying for,
and then: “Let me drive you to work.” And this old man, this
manager, who thought of disappearing among forgotten
brown folders or driving all the way to the provincial home of
his fathers, there to finish the rest of his days fishing for food on
73
a gray-sanded beach, would rest his eyes on his son and
worship the strong lad, light of his life, fruit of his loins, who
would triumph after him and his old bones, this seed grown
who would never have to covet another man’s fish in the
future.
74
WHILE THEY REMAIN
WITH US
Carl Lorenz Cervantes
We are driving down the road. It is night time now, and my
sister is asleep. My mother, yawning constantly, makes
conversation with my father, who is driving, just so the hypnotic
stretch of road does not make him fall asleep. The music on
the radio is soft and melodic, but I can’t make out the words. I
watch the blur of movement outside–there is nothing else but
darkness.
I am five–maybe seven–years old. I’m not sure where we came
from, but I know we’re going home. Did we come from
Baguio? Isabela? Somewhere north, I’m sure. I’m too young
to care and too sleepy to remember.
The sound of tires on the road is like white noise, and the
vibration on the seat is pleasant. My eyes are heavy. I close
my eyes, and an image appears of an April shower’s tree in
full bloom, its leaves swaying in the warm summer air. The
color of the flowers are heightened, so is the color of the grass
and the blue sky. I’m seated on top of a rusty white metal
slide, my sister is waiting for me to slide down so she could
75
slide down too. I imagine that I’m in the airplane, up in the
clouds. I miss riding the plane. I’m not sure why, but as far as I
remember, I’ve always loved airplanes. There’s something
about being away from everything, but knowing that wherever
you’re going, you’re going home. I would fight with my sister
about the window seat, and my mother would tell us that one
of us can sit beside the window going to, and the other would
sit on beside the window going back. I’d weigh my options. If I
sit now, I won’t be able to sit later. That would be my last
chance. The feeling of being lifted up is my favorite. The most
exciting part of taking flight is when the airplane heads up. I
brace myself, and we fly away.
I’ve always enjoyed flying. Like when my dad would carry me
and throw me up in the air. I wouldn’t be afraid because I
know that he would catch me. He does every time. After me,
my sister, and after her, me, until papa’s arms are tired. He
smiles at us, playfully telling us that that’s enough for today.
Aww, we say. Papa is always part of our games on the street.
He would always play the monster, and he would chase us.
We like being chased, I don’t know why. Children are like that.
It’s not that we want to run away. We just want to know that
somebody is chasing us, who is just going to tickle us. Laughter
in the streets. The laughter of children is contagious. I see the
adults laughing along.
76
Mama nudges me. I notice that the vibration of the tires have
stopped. We’re home. I’m too tired. Papa carries me to my
room. I see mama carrying my sister, who is hugging her neck,
her mouth open, drooling on mama’s shoulder. I want to
laugh, but I’m too tired. Papa lays me down on my bed and
takes my shoes off. Mama looks from the doorway. Is he
asleep? She enters, walks over to me. I can smell her perfume.
I’ve always liked her perfume. She gives me a warm kiss on the
forehead. Her lips are warm and soft. Her hand strokes my
hair, and I pretend to be asleep, but I know what’s happening.
They close the door, and I am left in the dark, the peaceful
dark.
I dream of myself, older, tired, alone. Why do I look sad?
Maybe, when my body stretched, my heart did too. Why do I
look like that? My older self is looking at something like a box,
a long rectangle box. There is a picture frame on top of it, and
flowers. Why am I crying about flowers? Who is in the box? A
woman walks up beside my older self. She is crying too. She
looks like my sister. They hug. I don’t think I would hug my
sister. They fade away, far away, far away, into the darkness,
and I feel myself being pulled out from the dream.
I wake up, a child again.
77
SEED
Marc de Faoite
Weeks of currents, aquatic and magnetic, brought Penyu here
again. She surfed the moonlit high-tide waves front fins tucked
and glided up onto the beach. The soft sand made her
progress slow and inelegant. She began to dig. Soft-shelled
eggs slowly filled the nest, fertilized by the seed of several
fathers, nature hedging bets that the strongest and fittest will
continue the race. Still working in the dark she covered the
glistening eggs with sand, then, as generations had done
before her, for more than 100 million years, returned into the
sea.
He shivered. The sea of stars had shifted. The waves still
washed up on the shore, but now there was a band of smooth
wet sand where the water had receded. Had Penyu been and
gone, or was she yet to come? He had waited almost a year
for her return, or any of her sisters or aunts and their precious
cargo. Eleven months spent craving something other than rice
and fish and tapioca. He stretched and waited until the stars
began to fade.
He walked the length of the beach looking for tracks until he
found Penyu’s nest. He crouched, then slowly excavated the
78
soft-shelled eggs, piling them onto the batik sarong he had
brought with him. There were almost two-hundred eggs
though he couldn’t count that high. Like most islanders he had
little use for numbers any greater than half-a-dozen.
He thought he heard voices behind the hiss and wash of the
waves breathing in and out upon the shore. They were faint at
first, perhaps imagination, but when he looked around he saw
the boat. It was bigger than any vessel on the island and had
more than a dozen men aboard. He raked his fingers through
the sand, searching for any remaining eggs, then bundled up
the laden sarong and withdrew into the shelter of the trees and
undergrowth that marked the edge of the forest.
The boat drew closer. The men spoke an unfamiliar dialect,
but he could understand most of what they said. Anchoring
the boat beyond the breaking waves they half-swam halfwaded ashore. Some carried their clothes in bundles held over
their heads. Others brought baskets of firm-bodied gleaming
fish. He watched them dress and gather firewood and soon
the smell of cooking fish reminded him that he had not eaten
in many hours. He hid the bundle of eggs in the undergrowth
then ventured forth onto the sand, but from far enough away
that the men could see him coming. Far enough away that he
could escape into the forest if they seemed hostile.
*
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He walked slowly back from the village, along the trail beside
the rice paddies, carrying Penyu’s eggs and a small package
made of folded banana leaves. His reluctant steps stirred the
dust that coated his bare feet and clung to the hem of his
threadbare sarong. Wrapped inside the leaves were four silvery
fish. A stranger had given them to him. He didn’t know how to
act around strangers. He didn’t know how to refuse. Their
lidless eyes had been clear, the sheen of their scales reflected
the afternoon light, they smelled of the vast ocean beyond the
island. He took the fish, thinking they would make a welcome
change to the muddy taste of catfish from the paddy fields.
Ahead in the distance he recognized the silhouette of Pak
Wan’s boy sitting in his usual place beneath the mango tree,
his knees pulled up towards his chin, his skinny arms wrapped
around his legs, staring out over the luminous green fields of
rice. Sometimes the boy would rock back and forth and make
low moaning sounds, but today he was silent and unmoving.
Almost every family in the village had a child that was an
outcast, or who was hidden like a shameful burden, kept in a
back room, or sometimes outside in a pen, like an animal,
living, eating and sleeping in its own waste. Some said it was
part of the curse upon the island, but he knew that it was
much simpler than that.
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Last week he found the boy crouched on his hands and knees
beside the calf in the lean-to behind his house, sucking on one
of the buffalo’s spare teats. It surprised him that the boy
managed to compete with the greedy calf, who always
wanted more, butting its mother’s udder with its head.
A few months earlier he had walked halfway across the island
with the buffalo to have her sired. It took him two whole days,
one there and one back, and cost him a month’s worth of rice,
but it was either that or risk another still-birth. It was an
investment in the future.
He watched the suckling boy for a moment, then quietly
stepped away. Let the boy drink what he could. There was
hunger in the village. Those who contributed the least were the
last to be fed. The boy contributed nothing. Nothing except
heart-ache.
It was almost a year since the boy ambushed a girl on her way
back from the fields. She lost the baby, whether naturally, or
by an infusion of herbs gathered in the forest, no one knew. It
wasn’t the sort of thing that was talked about.
The girl’s father came to see him. He talked about the rice
harvest, and then about the lack of rain, working up his
courage towards what he really wanted to say. You have a
81
daughter of your own, surely you must understand. He
nodded. He understood.
Some of the villagers wanted to kill the boy, he was a risk to
their daughters too, but he spoke against it. The boy wasn’t
right to begin with, he argued. He had less sense than a billygoat. Besides, if they had to kill all those in the village who
weren’t right …
He left the sentence unfinished, but still he was there that night
they stuffed the rag into the boy’s frightened mouth. When the
girl’s father lowered the heated knife he wanted to put his
hands over his ears to block out the stifled screams, but instead
he gritted his teeth and pushed the boy’s shoulders down into
the ground.
“I got some fish and lots of eggs.”
His wife looked up. She and their daughter were in the small
plot behind the sun-bleached wooden house, bent over the
bed of new rice-seedling green. She stood up, placed her
hands on her hips and arched back groaning, rubbing her
lower back and pounding it with the sides of her fists.
He stood watching his daughter, the way her hips shifted as
she worked. Though she kept its innocence, she had lost the
awkward jerkiness of childhood. Now there was a smooth
assuredness in her movements and a confident stillness in her
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eyes. He was proud of her. She was smart and obedient and
she was a good worker. He wanted to say something about
the sown seeds being the seeds of the future, but he couldn’t
work out the right words in his head. Instead he said nothing.
His wife watched him watching the girl. He turned his gaze
towards her and then towards his feet.
“A shipful of sailors landed today,” he said. “Their boat needs
some repairs. They’ll be on the island for a few days.”
Husband and wife stood shoulder to shoulder looking out
towards the hills on the horizon while upper teeth worried lower
lips.
“Need to get the far field ploughed if we’re to get these
seedlings in,” she said.
“I was planning on doing it now.”
He untethered the buffalo and rope-led her towards the fields.
She looked back with a whining grunt, reassuring her calf that
she would return he guessed. The calf was getting stronger
every day. By next year it would be bigger than its mother and
would take over the role of pulling the plough.
He bundled his sarong up around his waist, revealing his thin
sinewy legs. He stepped into the sun-heated water in the
paddy field. The warm mud beneath it oozed up between his
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toes and around his ankles. The ploughshare slid through the
fermenting viscous muck, releasing bubbles of gas that smelled
of childhood memories of when his father ploughed this field
as well. He had made the ploughshare himself, from a piece
of hardwood from the forest. Shaping it had blunted his
parang several times. He worked back and forth across the
field with the buffalo until the sun was low. He was tired, but
the field was ready. Tomorrow the planting could begin.
*
The daughter walked in front of her parents. She was the only
one left now. Their future depended entirely on her. They had
lost three other children. All daughters. Two never made it
beyond the first month of confinement, but it took nearly three
years to understand that there was something wrong with the
third, something wrong that could never be made right. She
died in her sleep. She hardly even struggled.
The family worked side by side, sweating in the humid heat,
pressing the slender seedlings into the warm nourishing mud.
With luck and rain their work would ensure their survival for
another season.
They finished before the hottest part of day. They washed and
ate and rested in the shade.
*
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His wife stayed behind at the home. Standing in the protective
shade of the mango tree she watched them leave, her fingers
knotting and unknotting. She followed them with her eyes
along the trail that led towards the river until they were out of
sight.
He saw that there were other fathers with their daughters at
the river too, and some men with their wives. He recognized
them all, but none would meet his eye, ignoring him, but
without hostility, their eyes turned inwards, absorbed in their
own thoughts. After some brief haggling over the price they all
boarded the wooden sampan that would carry them
downstream to the sea.
He watched the boatman position himself, standing on a
raised platform at the back of the little wooden boat. He
pushed the bamboo pole against the riverbed, but the
seaward current did most of the hard work. It was the return
journey that would be harder. For everyone. The surface of the
river rippled as the boat glided forward, and each time the tip
of the pole splashed free of the water he saw sunlight
transform the shining droplets into molten silvery jewels.
Unlike their fathers, the girls did not behave as strangers to
one another. As children they had played together, but now
that they were budding women they rarely had the chance to
meet. They were kept busy with cooking and laundry and hard
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work in the gardens and the fields. Most of them were cousins.
Their youthful features looked so alike that a stranger might
mistake them all for sisters. They were excited. Even though the
walk from the village to ocean was only half a day they
seldom had occasion to visit the island’s coast. Their carefree
laughter and chatter filled the late afternoon, echoing across
the water and through the trees as the boat smoothly slipped
downstream.
*
The girls walked out onto the fine white sand, mesmerized by
the sunlight twinkling on the vast ocean. The waves made a
hushing sound, like whispered secrets that they could not
understand.
At the edge of the forest the sailors had slung hammocks in
the shade. Smells of wood-smoke and cooking drifted from a
fire set upon the sand. Some of the men played music,
twanging on homemade stringed instruments, beating
goatskin drums, or whistling on little flutes. Others were busy
cutting meat, a rare delicacy for men so used to eating fish.
He counted almost twenty of them. They were a mixed bunch.
No two looked alike. Even without hearing their strange
accents any islander would know that they were outsiders.
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He spotted the man who had given him the fish and nodded.
The sailor stepped out from behind the veil of smoke that rose
above the cooking fire.
He called his daughter. She came and stood by his side.
He felt hatred towards this brute of a man, the man who had
given him four shining fish. He couldn’t face seeing his
daughter eat them in the end, so he had given them to Pak
Wan’s hungry boy instead.
He lightly placed his hand in the curve of his daughter’s lower
back, realizing with a sudden sharp intensity that he had never
loved the girl as intensely as he did right now. He asked
himself how it was possible to feel so much anger and so much
love at the same time. He held his hand on the girl’s back for
a moment longer, then with the gentlest touch he nudged her
forward.
The sailor roughly took her hand. The look of confusion on her
face changed to horrified understanding. She resisted at first,
but her father nodded, while he clenched teeth and fists. His
daughter’s expression would be branded on his mind forever.
He tasted the sour saltiness of blood inside his mouth. He had
bitten through his lip. It occurred to him that he was standing
almost on the exact spot where he had gathered Penyu’s eggs.
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He swallowed the metallic taste, and watched the stranger
lead his daughter away towards the trees.
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GIRLS YOUR AGE
Madina Malahayati
Picture this: hushed giggles on the school hallway, fingers
looped around sport-shoe laces and dirt caked under nails.
Everyone's legs are blistered with mosquito scabs – dull red like
astronomically correct constellations; skin honeyed by the
equatorial sun that never seems to relent.
I thought school was supposed to be savage. Savage, like
crushing depression / common jock fistfights / bloodied t-shirts
frayed with time and halfhearted forgiveness – not like voices
complaining of heat and of our Rupiah being worth so little.
I read once that popular girls were supposed to choke their
fingernails with nail polish and stuff their mouth with bloodred
lipstick, and I believed it. I dreaded middle school with all its
whimsical promises of vengeance and glory, but all we get
here is tall skinny girls with a dull gleam inside their eyes and a
tendency to hover around as they please – trying to find some
pairs of ears that could hear their voice without being nosy and
spilling words through Skype. But of course, they never get
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what they wish for.
This is middle school. This is where gossips are traded around
like currency and a heart being broken you only roll your eyes
at.
There is no Adonis here, no chiseled muscles that the girls circle
around like Jibril’s halo. No instant heartthrobs that the new
ones immediately fawn and trip over – only giggled whispers
in the cafeteria of who smokes, they drink? – ah, that’s so
obvious. Did you see their snap? Can’t believe they’d be so
stupid. So stupid.
Every hand is equipped with mostly iPhones – they were
supposed to gleam in the sunlight, but when three hundred
teenagers equip it like a gun it just funnels together into one
blinding light that screams extreme wealth gap alert and
something like cracked screens worth more than a beggar’s
salary is something commonplace in our grounds.
And I do not belong there.
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Of course I’d never belong. That is why I notice how
unbelievably easy they talk of London and Amsterdam, we
came home that day and suddenly we had two Macbooks for
year six, Blackberry phones thrown to the air and rocketing
back to the gravity it’s ruled by only as a source of amusement
and non-concerned shrieking. Alienated by tales of childhood
trips to Melbourne and Boston; God I hope next year’s trip is
to Japan / Well, you know, it is expensive / And my god it’s
worth it.
And when I question if they know how privileged they are to
be here, Kalian semua tau kan kita harus kaya buat sekolah
disini, all they respond with are bashful cheeks and strangely
comfy laughter of Oh no, what are you even saying.
And my insides burn silent with dull envy – envious, of how
finely ignorance coats their lips.
But I guess the chapstick made out of the opportunities I have
is applied pretty thick, too.
---
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(You all know, right, how high up we must in this hierarchy to
even be here.)
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THE SYMPATHY
FLOWERS
Jan Angelique Dalisay
I love flowers. I often buy the lot on Saturdays, taking the long
route to the Freedom Park to see them in different colors,
conditions, height, and prices. It’s uncanny how only I had an
affinity for these beauties. My sister loves blue roses but she’s
deathly afraid of caterpillars. Hence, she can never bring
herself to touch them. I couldn’t rely on her to cut the end
diagonally and change the water to keep the flowers “alive” for
a week! Caterpillars don’t scare me though. I love their varied
green-lime hues. They’re chubby, too, that sometimes I want to
take a leaf, rub it against their “skin,” and roll them until they
get dizzy. Or, if my Asian Forest scorpling was still around, I
could put the caterpillar in his glass case, and let its impatient
pincers pierce through its hairy skin.
I love flowers and I like nothing more but to give a stem or
bouquet to my friends for special occasions. When a colleague
I was fond of decided to leave for the greener grass, I gave
her a bouquet of assorted mums—the white and greenish kind.
It was wrapped in pink paper. My pretty present made her
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gush. Then Valentine’s Day came; my two girl-friends
happened to be “single.” To poke fun at their single status, I
gave them each a single long-stemmed rose. Each was
wrapped in some transparent material. The rose made them
giggle but what made it all the merrier was how all three of us
looked. Since both held a rose and I, the giver, was emptyhanded, I almost looked pitiful!
And there was you. It was supposed to be a mundane Friday
afternoon. I went out of the office for a brisk walk when my
phone beeped. A colleague and close friend of mine inquired
if I knew that you were “gone.” I thought by “gone” she meant
that you’re no longer working at the IT office.
I’m not that dense; I could sense something was wrong. This
was probably what the internet people call “in denial.” So, she
went on to explain how they found your body after three days.
Three days! My disbelief was growing. And yet, it couldn’t
change a thing. More details were exchanged between texts.
Suddenly, it felt weird: to exist, while you’re ... no, I couldn’t use
the word, not yet.
A Saturday morning. I needed to see you as soon as I can—
even for the last time. You came from a different island; as
soon as your brother was able, he brought your body back to
your hometown. I stopped at a flower shop. I wanted to bring
you something. You knew me as someone who loves flowers.
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My work desk stood close to yours that every time you go to
your desk, you’d pass beside mine. And I knew how a
delightful sight my desk was. Like some of our other
colleagues, you liked walking a bit slow to let your eyes see the
flowers—a bunch of gladioli, the fragrant sampaguita, or
bright chrysanthemums—with the occasional miniature toy,
and all my mini-menagerie of odd things beside the computer
monitor. I didn’t know if that still mattered but I just couldn’t
come empty-handed. So, on that Saturday morning, I’ve
decided to bring you flowers. I’ve entered the flower shop only
to find myself clueless. Good thing the storekeeper knew how
to keep things running. She began asking me questions: do
you want the ones in the basket or those standing flowers?
What would you like to write in the little card? A message? I
didn’t know, so she showed me some sample messages. I’ve
picked a one-liner that said something about expressing
sympathy to those you’ve left behind. But didn’t that include
me? I was puzzled more than ever. So, while the florist busied
his hands for the floral arrangement, I sat down. Slowly, I had
let my eyes censor the surrounding. There were lilies of colors I
haven’t seen before, familiar flowers whose names I just
couldn’t remember. And there were the prized hydrangeas! I
was surrounded by flowers. On a typical day, that sight would
have made everything special for me. But that was not a
typical day. I wasn’t taking the jeepney ride to see the floral
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merchandise of Freedom Park, no. I was inside a white taxi,
seated next to my basket of sympathy flowers. It had white
stargazers, white anthuriums, and an odd-looking grey-white
plant, too. And as the taxi braved its way against the building
current of morning traffic, as the silence of that morning
lingered, something struck me: it was my first time to buy
sympathy flowers. It was my first time to pick flowers for
someone who won’t be able to see them. Hell, when I get
there, you won’t be able to sit and crouch just to smell them. It
was absurd!
I tightened my grip on the basket’s handle. The road was a bit
rough; it had slightly shaken the vehicle, the flowers. I didn’t
want the trip to ruin the arrangement of your sympathy
flowers. I knew you would have loved them.
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YANGON:
THE FASCINATION OF AN
OLD DOWNTOWN
CRISTINA MARIA CHIOREAN
The old downtown of Yangon is the place to soak up the
authentic atmosphere of the city with its long, narrow and
perpendicular streets loosing yourself in the constant buzz,
deliberate chaos, various smells, a multitude of colours,
strange noises and a mixture of architecture.
The old downtown I describe here is not made up only of the
big boulevards like the Pansodan road or the Strand avenue,
and for me experiencing the area does not mean to circle the
Independence square or to walk from the Bogyoke market to
the Sule pagoda.
My 'downtown' is made up of the long, narrow perpendicular
and numerically numbered streets with a well organised
structure that is easy to remember, reminiscent of the old
colonial past, which unfolds to the south of Bogyoke market
until the Strand road.
It is not enough to just take a brief glance of downtown if you
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call yourself a temporary inhabitant of the city. Even as a
tourist, it would not qualify as sufficient, especially when you
have more than one day set aside to visit the city. You have
enough time. The downtown wakes up early and goes to
sleep, at least on some streets, quite late. Soak in the
atmosphere for at least half a day. The impressions, believe
me, will be strong and will stay with you forever.
I strolled through these streets numerous times for long hours.
With each new walk I discovered another eye-catching
building, a different shop, an interesting craft on display on the
sidewalk, or a local curiosity. I met all kinds of people. These
daily encounters of people and things pleasantly surprised or
suddenly saddened me but I learned to appreciate each of
them as events which I only live and see once. Every day is
different and special in downtown Yangon.
In the early morning, when traffic is absent, if you find yourself
on a street from the lower block you can see all the way to the
upper block. The buildings seem connected by the thick
network of wires which supply the households with electricity.
Birds are flying low, attracted by the street market below.
Around this time of the year the visibility is blurry. We are in the
middle of the dry season and the hot air is full of dust and
exhaust.
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Sometimes I would take a look in between two rows of
buildings. People store things or dry clothes in the available
space, on and in between garbage. You wonder whether the
tenants are throwing the garbage directly from their window?
A few young men store huge bottles of water for distribution in
the area. You wonder whether any rats' excrements remain on
the bottles no matter how much you clean them before use?
One day I witnessed a fight between a fat rat and a lady. The
animal seemed dizzy, maybe from the heat, and did not
manage to escape the hits from the expertly handled
broomstick.
The smells follow you all the time and for the most part they
are not pleasant. An advice for the sensitive visitor is to bring a
perfumed scarf and keep it handy when passing, for example,
open sewers which are usually covered by slabs of concrete
which serve as the sidewalk for pedestrians. However due to
the often unstable and loose slabs, pedestrians usually prefer
to walk on the street. The road thus becomes the crowded
place where you squeeze in between cars, tea shops, trishaws,
dogs and all kind of objects stored randomly and waiting to
be transported.
Some of the downtown's buildings serve as warehouses for the
multitude of goods shipped in the port of Yangon. Like in old
times, the Chinese and Indian locals are the merchants of the
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city with shops opened on the ground floor of virtually every
house. You will be surprised by the vast array of wares that are
sold from fabrics to plastic toys, from sailing ropes to gold
jewelleries offered by the Chinese merchants, from tons of
glassware to all kinds of tools on display on improvised tables
on the streets.
The colours of these streets are vibrant because of the many
markets which sell fruits, vegetables and flowers in skilful
arrangements, tea shops with trays of food that makes your
mouth water, colourful longyis worn by local ladies, and if you
remember to look up, the long string of clothes put out to dry
hanging from most windows.
But, truth be told, it so happens that the tourist will most of the
time forget to look up being also distracted by the candid
smiles of the locals and the calls they shout to catch your
attention to the wares they are selling.
This is unfortunate because they miss out on the beautiful old
colonial buildings which are made out of wood or bricks,
building materials which show the passage of time. Some were
built at the beginning of the 20th century by the British settlers
or the Indian merchants. In some streets, like the 18th street,
lower part, you can witness an entire row of wooden houses
with panels stretching from the floor to the ceiling which
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protect the interior from the sun. What a strange feeling if you
arrive early enough to be almost alone in the middle of these
structures that are waiting to be admired on both sides of the
street! It is like going back in time or being part of a movie
which is set in the old colonial times with houses of wealthy
Indian traders selling timber, their lodgings close enough to
their teak warehouses located on the Yangon river waiting for
the ships to trade the precious wood in countries far away from
Burma.
For me the heart of the downtown is represented by the locals.
The people try to get along day by day, determined and with
a positive attitude. They always have a smile ready for you.
Still they work hard, rush along, sell and buy groceries, repair
things you would never think exist anymore, cook on charcoal
cook stoves, sip tea at the tea shops, read the newspaper,
gaze around bored or curious, and take a nap in the shadow.
I am fascinated by the number of locals that read the
newspapers. Everywhere, every time. I tend to forget I am in a
country which recently opened itself to democracy and this is a
feature of the transition. There are dozens of different
newspapers and these are sold at every corner. People are
thirsty for information especially now when the nomination of
Myanmar's new President is so imminent. One taxi driver told
me recently that they (the NLD supporters) are quiet, they
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read and listen to the news, but do not express themselves
loudly. They need to be silent, not to bother anybody to allow
the political negotiations to proceed smoothly. So they
continue reading, especially the "Democracy" newspaper. I like
it when I see people reading on the streets. I keep a wide
collection of photographs on this topic.
People seem optimistic and the least fortunate take it in a
positive way.
I am aware that the city is developing in a way which is very
characteristic for Southeast Asia. I refer to the many stories
about Myanmar's fast economic development that receive a
lot of coverage in today's local and international media. If
some would argue that you are already coming too late to
witness a city frozen in time I would argue that now is actually
the best time to experience the fast change while also learning
about the unique traditions which are still preserved by the
communities.
The mobile phone market has confirmed its huge popularity
and affordability for all the social classes of the population.
Everybody is connected and everybody checks his smart
phone every few seconds. The other day I noticed a tourist, an
old lady, watching two little children playing on a couple of
mobile phones. She looked amazed, probably she would have
expected to find them playing hide and seek around their
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parents' teashop in downtown but she was indeed a year or so
too late for that already.
People start to dress smartly or to develop their own fashion
style. Boys have funky hairstyles. Young people are eager to
learn and try everything new.
Relatively new housing projects, a kitsch of tiles and glass with
an array of ornaments, squeeze in between old buildings.
These are still modest and date back to a few years ago.
However new ones are popping up like mushrooms after the
rain in this new economic boom. I was taken aback by the way
these huge apartment buildings change the landscape of
downtown. It is still sad to notice children working on
construction sites. During my walks, I also realised how many
children are left playing alone on the streets and thus are not
attending school. I will not mention the many ones helping to
serve customers in tea shops.
A walk in downtown Yangon will take you emotionally through
the whole range of feelings one can experience. For me this
neighbourhood remains my favourite part of the city, a place
full of colours and contrasts, where I love to wander, to
discover and to interact with the kind locals. The community
embraces everybody. They even have patience with me and
my camera. Hello! Mingalabar! I hear often, Where are you
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from? I am asked sometimes. I smile. I feel like in a big family
when in downtown.
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SENIOR’S DISCOUNT
Teh Su Ching
Ten days after Ah Kong died, I found his Guardian Pharmacy
Gold Seniors discount card in my red wallet. Ah Ma had
handed me the card while Pops was in Washington and Mum
in San Francisco, so that I'd get a discount on adult diapers,
food thickener, and glucolin. But I always forgot to flash the
card for a discount. I always paid the full price.
A month ago, on a Sunday afternoon, undertakers from
Singapore Casket put Ah Kong's body on a stretcher and
carried him out the front door. Pops finally cried, and Ah Ma
gave my aunt and her husband Ah Kong's Cetaphil body
lotion. I helped myself to his green Smith-Corona typewriter.
Ah Kong had been losing weight for a month. Saturday, the
day before he died, a nurse had come to the house to put a
tube into his mouth so that we could tube-feed him his meals.
He couldn't swallow anymore, and had started to spit food
out. He had been diagnosed with Stage Four lung cancer last
year, and given twelve months to live. Thirteen months passed.
My husband has fond memories of his grandma. He
remembers conversations he had with her, time spent together,
jokes cracked. I have few to no such memories of Ah Kong. I
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have memories of things he did that I found adorable, but not
whole chats I'm grateful for having had. There were no
concerted efforts to take Ah Kong and Ah Ma on outings.
They rejected our attempts to. Ah Ma preferred to stay at
home and watch the TV serials she found more engaging than
real life, while Ah Kong enjoyed going out on public transport
alone, and meeting strangers who would coo over and admire
his chutzpah. Taking care of Ah Kong and Ah Ma was a duty
my parents bore. Sometimes they saw it as a burden, never as
a source of pride.
That Sunday morning, I decided to bring my laptop to the
living room and work there. Before beginning work, I checked
on Ah Kong in his room. He was wheezing, his mouth agape.
His eyes darted all over the wall behind me, as if he could see
things I couldn't, or perhaps they just could not stay focused.
There was a gurgling sound coming from the back of his
throat. He had lost the strength to swallow a few days before.
A handout the hospice workers gave us said this was normal. It
told us not to panic, and not to think that sound meant Ah
Kong was having difficulty breathing. Ah Ma wept quietly on
her bed, alternating her gaze between Ah Kong and their
ceiling. I left the room and continued to work in the living
room. It was a sunny morning. A light breeze rustled the leaves
on the trees outside.
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Five pages into my screenplay, Mum called to me. There was
an edge in her voice. When I got to the room, Nyah, the more
mild-mannered of our two maids, Pops, and Mum stood by
Ah Kong's bed. Ah Ma continued crying on hers. To prevent
bedsores, Nyah had been helping Mum turn Ah Kong over
when the gurgling stopped. Mum said Ah Kong had stopped
breathing. His eyes were still half-open, his mouth still agape.
Mum and Pops handed me a stethoscope. I had never used
one before. I tried to remember how a doctor I had visited in
Hong Kong listened to my heartbeat. There were two discs at
the base of the rubber tube - one bigger, one smaller. I
unbuttoned Ah Kong's shirt and held his cold, limp hand. I
placed the bigger disc against his chest, when Mum said, "no,
it's the other way around." "Are you sure?" "Yes." I placed the
small disc against his chest and tried to listen for sounds. But I
wasn't sure what I was listening for. I thought I heard beats,
but they were so sporadic and soft. I wasn't sure if what I was
hearing was my own pulse.
Nyah began to cry. Pops, Mum, and I didn't know if he was
dead, or if he had simply stopped breathing for a minute or
two. The handout we got from the hospice had also warned us
this could happen. How long would we have to wait before he
began breathing again? Would he start blinking again, then,
too?
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We called the neighbour, a dermatologist, for help. She shone
a light into his eyes and placed the bigger disc of her
stethoscope against his bare, bony chest. She was grave. "It
doesn't look good," she apologised. I began to cry. I sobbed in
the kitchen while we waited for the death certificate doctor to
come. Mum handed me a tissue and said, "the Buddhists
believe crying traps the soul on earth." I told her, "I don't." The
nurse who had visited the day before had told us to lie his
body flat on the bed. We stretched him out from his half-fetal
position, and placed his hands on his sunken stomach, one
above the other. I tried to close his eyes repeatedly, but they
kept half-open. His mouth stayed open too. My big brother's
mother-in-law brought a small blue transistor with a miniature
white Buddha figurine on it. Mummy plugged it in. The
transistor played a recording of a droning Buddhist chant, with
no beginning and no end, next to the body.
When my big brother came back from San Francisco a few
days later, he spoke to me about how he felt Ah Kong's last
weeks affirmed Buddhism's focus on suffering. "If this
experience has taught me anything," he began his reflective
monologue. I nodded and listened and sucked on a MINT
PLUS strawberry-flavoured sweet, one of the hundreds
Singapore Casket had included in its family mourning
package.
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In Ah Kong's final weeks, he lost his capacity for speech, or
rather, he realised he had stopped forming words we could
understand, and given up trying to communicate. Ah Ma
believes when he moved and smacked his lips, the way he did
every time I showed him photographs of my baby nephew, his
first great grandson, he was trying to smile. Pops believes Ah
Kong waited till Mum got back from San Francisco, before
dying the next day. Mum believes Ah Kong is better off dead.
I don't know what to believe.
In Ah Kong's cupboard sits a pile of store-brand adult diapers
and underpads, a can of Thick 'n' Easy that gave his blended
food the consistency of yoghurt, and a powder blue tin of
grape-flavored glucolin we mixed with water to make his
energy drink. His Gold Seniors discount card expires next
March.
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BRANCHES
Southeast Asian Diaspora,
Migration, & Beyond
110
Jemima Yong, born 1990, is a Sarawakian photographer and
performance maker based in Singapore and London. She is
interested in developing the role of the photographer in live
performance and studying the relationship between live culture
and visual literacy. She has exhibited in Singapore, all over the
UK and has been published in The Times, The Guardian,
Swazi Observer, Straits Times and Sydney Morning Herald.
She is also photographer in residence at Exeunt Magazine.
111
Jemima Yong
Jemima Yong
112
Jemima Yong
This trilogy of photographs is part of a chapter called The Will to Live,
the central character being Yong’s grandfather Joseph Yong. The Will
to Live is part of a larger project of analogue photography
called Performance | Life | Archive.
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FAITH HEALER
Ally Ang
When I arrived on these shores
the first thing I learned was that
a brown body is always queer
an immigrant body is always fractured
and I, an immigrant daughter
have inherited this as my gift.
Uprooted, I have tried
to grow on foreign soil
but I am always too alien
an invasive species.
I’m not supposed to be beautiful.
At best, I am exotic
at worst, undesirable.
Unloveable.
Unfuckable.
What they don’t tell you is
how exhilarating it is
to love someone who looks like you
who is also brown, queer, immigrant daughter
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also an alien body on foreign soil:
all the things about yourself
that you were taught to hate.
Her love disarms me
leaves me vulnerable and tender.
She channels god through her fingertips
reaching inside me to chase my demons away.
She is electric.
Cautiously, I have begun to build a home
with her, two bodies becoming mountains
amidst a burning city.
Our roots grow slow and boundless
and we are expansive.
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MEMORY
Ally Ang
The ocean remembers
what generations forget:
my father, not yet ten years old
his mother’s arms wrapped around him
praying away the guns
and the blood
and the crying.
he survives, but others
are not as lucky.
Thirty years later and an ocean away
a child is born laughing
with a head full of thick black hair.
This is where I come from: a long line
of survivors
whose stories remain trapped
on the other side of the language barrier.
But the ocean remembers.
Let me do what I came here to do:
I am still laughing
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and dancing
and loving
even as my country burns
behind me.
The ocean remembers.
I am tired of running
to avoid becoming ash.
I am done letting others name me
& lay claim to me
in their harsh and unfamiliar tongues.
My body is a pillar of salt
and I’m not looking back.
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NOT YET MY COUNTRY
Bobby Sun
i. malaysia
kl, ’69. my father learns
he is a troublemaker;
he is ten years old
with a gun to his head
and a soldier in his house.
they tell him stay out.
he stays on and ten years later
he is the token, the only chinese
paid by the state that year to graduate,
among the thirty-odd percent
of places they have in the day.
he leaves; we still visit.
there is a concrete-ringed house in johor
we rent out for eight hundred a month.
there is family, sown
up and down the peninsula
still, we must remember;
this will not always be ours.
this is not yet my country.
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ii. singapore
jurong, ’97. my mother lifts
her hands from my eyes;
I smell paint and leather.
we pay twice as much
for one-quarter the house,
but it doesn’t need a fence;
father tells me up north
there was trouble in ’69,
there is trouble now,
there will be trouble but we
will make it here.
in school, ’09. my friends and I
get a card. everyone’s
is pink but mine
is blue and says,
“not yet”. I stay on
and four years later
with the sons of ‘94
I cross the border
from blue to green.
my heart is too weak
for a gun so they give me
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a desk and time instead.
this is not yet my country,
but for two years,
I am its.
iii. china
’14, in camp. I read the news;
our prime minister says
that in borneo, twenty thousand chinese
found democracy before america.
a letter to the editor that day
complains our nation is dying,
from the foreign bodies
lodged in its heartlands
that look just like ours.
my father speaks the chinese
his colleague brings to work.
I learned mine in ten years
from a history five thousand old;
it creaks when I open the hinges.
I cannot speak my mother tongue.
this is not yet my country.
I have forgotten the chinese for
120
“help, I’m lost”.
here I cannot find my way
much less myself.
121
WET DIARY OF
SOUVENIRS INCOMPLETS
A Series of Poems
Mary Alinney Villacastin
Fragment Footnotes of Once-Upon-a-Time Footprints Running
Barefoot in the ______
1. beginningless conditions:
(under) solar heat,
its presence & absence
radiating ,,,
refracting , , ,
a feedback furnace,
clouding smoke shadows,
creeping,
echoing a cry,
reverberating
back-to-back walls
bellow
howls
bliss blows out paradise --(a human home without a dome
eats its insides
out,
primordial imprisonment
122
keeps its outsides
in,
until the bullet shell
explodes.)
2. pioneer transcendent directions:
plant wild islands of meteoric rock matter
bloom algae blue-green seaweed grass
float fireboats between water worlds
fly, fly, fly,
like ancient bird’s feather buried in fossil fuels
like sister snakes’ scales weathered age in climate change
like an extinct species speck dust in sunken sand dunes
like an island’s edge resisting end in elemental skies
its demise:
escape physics,
escape hell
first fall,
stand up again & against
sail across ocean’s distance
voyage
void of sirens
manifest destiny
spiritmaterialize residensity
machinize propensity
vortex speeeeeeed
until magical equation reads [breathe]
(human habituation = cosmological cardinal direction
or, ‘we worship we worship we worship we worship we worship we...’)
3. this is a [portmanteau] story, re-told:
this is a story about you. /
123
this is a story about me. /
this is a story about love. /
this is a story about journeys. /
this is a story about journeys to the other side. /
this is a story about journeys to the other. /
this is a story about rebirth. /
this is a story about samsara. /
this is a story about life on planet earth. /
this is a story about life in the underworld. /
(This is a story about human life in synthetic seashell, growing its
(a)symmetrical limbs in spirals, grounding sub-dirt’s grid in I's
prosthetic extension, polar contours of calcified, plastic contradictions.
This here became that there and that there became this here (ribs to
limbs: am I repeating another genesis?), back & forth & forward, like
media’s me-mirror miming/mining carbon (.com)motion, wheel-ward
spinning ‘truth’ in fool’s merry-go-round loop notion of now news,
webbing world’s war waves w/ blind surf rider’s smile, forgetful of
shoreline limits...
xXx
[[[as live primetime memory suddenly record stops coming storms’
fresh riptides,
flesh-skin shield morphs home, (de)code suspends composed
hurricane center]]]
xXx
Only until multiple punctures immunize post-tempest trauma, tearwater filling/filtering fluid of mind eye’s, can shiny visions of sandy
voyages, beyond blur of half/horizon's structural-logical geometry,
open up, as a pearl, to gloss glimmer sur-face/subvert compositional
124
flux(us) from imperfect curves. Not until this life seeizes the light in
circular /diffraction/ does our story end,
to begin, again, anew (we).)
125
Pilgrim’s Pathological Passages/To Sea Center of Earth
A Typed Prayer of Topographic Texture, Thought at Time of
Wanderer’s Written Witness:
[To the Land of Wirikuta,
to those humans who
protect all sacred space-time
points oriented to holy plant spirits,
A-men.]
The desert, once under the ocean,
escaped earthquake’s tectonic tempest,
decided dirt’s disguise before ridge demise.
Once, this desert is an ocean . . . . . .
When we step on spines of spikes,
we grow like seaweeds or saguaros,
taking prick of tick-tock-ticking,
phytonutrient passing passage of we-me-moments,
minute-by-minute action into algae growth acceleration,
surviving by slipping into skins, thick by water’s war storms;
Callous from a cactus is foot’s souvenir of sovereignty, like a flag of
victory fluid in the sky.
Once, this desert is an ocean ..............
When we voice cosmos untamed hourglass vacuum,
we hear our echoes stir cries lost on other side underworld,
screaming mirrors of madness spit sinking primal slime in pirate
pilgrim ships;
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I try to speak silent to spirits but they’re too many or too loud, like
gushing rivers
whispering for a tiny swish of attention as a colony of fish waves
sea/scales with sailor swords.
Shiny jewels of wet clouds slash coastline’s chest like stolen treasure’s
descent into coral reefs;
What more to matter than to submerge alone & alive in divided
dimensions above destiny.
Once, this desert is an ocean .. .. ..
When we pride in Singular Present Tense Divine,
we pray to the Capital(ist) Logics of Conditional Statements, like
Humanity’s Limitlessness:
That the shared Tree of Life sings in our staged Theater of War, of
Bodydrama’s Battle Reel,
That which is as forgotten as Atlantic Slave Trade or forgiven as
Colonization’s Sins,
now forges a self’s (s)kin, X (oxygen hole) rippled &
inhaled
like a lung puncture Politics to Prana,
like a So-Realist Play of Gendered Toybox Trauma,
like a Distant Pacific Vortex of Plastic Trash,
like a Disneyland Ride into Dread’s Paid Dreamtime,
like Penelope’s Odyssean Desires of a boat’s crash on the coast on
the course to change herstory.
You wonder yonder, but the story is the same:
You swim; you drown. You float, you flourish.
You pick your poisons & they prick you.
Once, this desert is an ocean ,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,
Sip Sleepy-Time Folktale Tea For Survival
127
Over the dinner table,
a mother tells her daughter a story:
Over the ocean on northern continental bedrock,
a widowed grandmother and her daughter-in-law
meet beside once again to nibble-giggle whisper
diaspora’s distant pacific island goodnight gossip
“A daughter of a neighbor and a relative
by less than six.666 degrees of separation
became sick with stomach pains for six months.
And do you know what they did to cure her conditions?”
“Well, will I believe if I knew trouble’s truth?”
“Before last summer’s tempest of radioactive torment,
she got a full pipe pull of incense puff smoke
blown down her belly by a she-sha/man healer
from the flip side of the old sea-boat bog...”
"Yawa Pahawa!"
"Yawa Pahawa!"
[“Devil, get out!”]
[“Devil, get out!”]
[or more accurately, “That evil thing doing tricks, get out of
here!”]
[or more arguably, “That dirty-devil’s thing doing tricks inside, get
outta here!”]
128
An exorcism?
A laugh (& a half).
“And not too long later, the young girl went into labor;
her baby died soon after, so did she...”
A 15-year-old third-year high-schooler,
child of XY in relative to Z,
kid giving birth to kin,
by swamp witch’s wish-whip of words,
by swapped spit’s lust-spun DNA spell,
by some dull & dumb gang member no-gooder neighbor boy,
by some curse conjured alive from secret sorceresses of inherited
misery given birth
by some sperm from her no-good-doin’ adulteratin’ adulterer
fisherman father,
by that karma-comes-back-as-bad-luck kisses of his many bitter
child-bearing mistresses,
scattered like ass biting fire crabs slave laboring family love on far
islands
across
heavy eye’s horizon sea - - - subsurface wounds truth:telling*
*(As if tropical sun’s story ever ceases at liquid edges of seashore lips:
homesick heartbeats pitter-pattern matter on re-union ritualreproduce repeat-repeat, embodied along stormy directions, coded
in cloud mouth messages; life lingers on in hole’s loop)
The morale?: ‘A spirit is born, killed, and re-risen’
Like night’s shadow, or today’s tomorrow,
129
lurking below the bedsheets:
a tucked monster
under water blanket
of daydream’s
sleep
130
Replay xXx-Minor Notes to Tune Off/On Future Fear: or,
Learn to Swim from Sinking Islands
Once upon a pleasure’s time,
bathtub of ocean gap traps 2 islands,
[like tako dako ug tako gamay
(big ‘tako’ and little ‘tako’)]
through wide-eyed distance this divide desire glistens,
[“let’s go beyond borders of order,
swim further off shoreline of fear’s edge,
off end of lolo’s seawall backyard fence!”]
lust daydreams of floating flesh like mermaid fish,
[spinnin’ star system’s grip,
kin family’s hips,
dna trippin’ trauma’s drip,
alien heart’s tight lip; creep creatures of belly’s deep]
like we 3 witchy women who glide high tides hollerin’ wildness,
[hollow plastic water gallons grippin’ our thighs afloat,
locomotive body masses buoy like masted sailboats,
spine serpents slivering moon’s rising liquid,
face-space perception swells self-picture lizard vivid;
bit by daredevil’s goddess guts of glory]
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below us, slowness of sea muscle-suspended like leisure bicycle ride,
[in echo’s listening distance, your cousin repeat screams for your
return.
to swim to that visible island beyond & back, dis
believable whim.
no one’s ever done this before, wide wade swim.
to swim into that invisible void back & beyond, sans shark
attack.
no one’s ever gone there before, tugging their behinds on
wastebasket water jugs.
‘do you KNOW (not) what death-by-drown be in that
beyonder???’]
paddlers peddle compass wheel to weave collective destination,
[underneath weightless knees kicking air gravity, feet feathering
fluid’s light waves,
smell of heated seaweed salt, sweet skin’s fruit shell prune
prickly lines, clear signs sense
crystallize colonized contradiction bloom colors sea-saw filtering
mobile limb’s glimmer:
blue-purple / plum purple / sky violet / violet-blue / violent
bruise-blue /
tropical-true-blue / skylight blue / plastic pen ink blue / bloodfusion-blue /
flash flood blue / plundered-paradise-postcard blue / betweengreen-blue /
hidden hues radiate transparent blue’s muse-eum]
132
‘til finally, multitude body momentum pendulum portals other alien
planets of possibility,
[fear is unknown’s underwater flash of fate,
spit/swap’s splash in face of surreal idealism;
fear is lost myth of mind’s friction/fiction,
first idea bridged by mind’s eye, imagination;
fear is what stops writing stage screenplay,
chills reel to press pause/play like dead film;
fear is a pilot program of chaos control,
if corrupted captive; free unconscious fins (endings)]*
“sink your fears, float like a feather”**
-from future word play & past passage pleasure****
///
*This is a true-tale auto-flashback of prior storm stored memory from
a seasonal stay on the Visayan island of my family’s Philippine
origins, hit by the eye of Typhoon Haiyan [Yolanda] in November
2013, at written time, the strongest tempest to strike land in modern
recorded human history.
**This is an afternoon where we tres amigas spent swimming to a
nearby island from my grandfather’s house along boat coast, on the
whim of midsummer wind, self-buoyed with plastic jugs between our
legs.
133
***This text is a tribute to an island’s survival, when the people and
waters rise together.
134
Aster V. Delgado is a Filipina
lesbian artist based in
Hamburg. She started to
paint in 1996 while she was
still working at the Women's
Crisis Center in Manila. From
the beginning, her art has
consciously dealt with the
situation of women/lesbians.
An additional theme is
animal life and nature. Her
often colorful and clear
images reflect her political
visions, her fantasies, dreams
and passions.
Aster has exhibited her work
in the Philippines, in
Switzerland, Germany and
the Czech Republic.
135
Aster V. Delgado
136
OUT OF TIME
Alanda Kariza
’You know,
perhaps it's time to go.'
This is the millionth time
the line has been uttered
by my mouth, that you usually,
passionately kiss, as if
there is no tomorrow
for there might never be.
Perhaps it’s time to go
for me, so you can stop
wondering what could have been
had I said yes, to other
bigger things, than when
you ask to undress me
and kiss what’s bare tenderly.
Perhaps it’s time to go
for you, so I can stop pretending
that I could give you
everything you ask,
137
for undressing is easy
unlike other things
such as unloving.
Perhaps it’s time to go
without letting you know.
So the ghosts of me can live inside you,
and that way,
you can keep me alive.
Without reason.
And most of all:
Without explanation.
138
THE CHANCES WE TOOK
Alanda Kariza
The chances we took have many flavours, served in different shapes.
Accompanying us in different dizzy moments, in different cities too.
1.
A Bacardi cola served unappealingly in a huge plastic cup.
I kept holding onto it, before, until, and even after our eyes met.
Not knowingly. A stranger to another.
Not knowingly. I let every sip passed by.
After all, it was simply the last available alcoholic beverage at the
booth.
2.
Grey Goose, and another Grey Goose, served in a similar plastic cup.
This time, being friends with blasting sounds on the stereo.
Our eyes did not meet. We both enjoyed the music in the room.
Our lips did not meet. We both enjoyed the silence in our heads.
Only afterwards, when the lights were gone, and the sun almost rose.
3.
Local draft beers, served chilled in their bottles.
I sat on the edge of the bed while everyone else were playing games.
You came by just to change the music playlist.
139
You said hi for a chat, awkwardly; I responded, in the same
awkwardly vibe.
You left the city first thing in the morning.
You left me wondering.
4.
Johnny Walker Black Label, on the rocks.
Served in a fancy way: with a crystal clear glass, on a small round
table.
We were both wearing black.
You, with a bit of grey; and I, with a bit of skin.
The glasses clanged.
You smiled, with fingers running through my back.
I left with a smile.
I left you wondering.
5.
I don’t know what you ordered for me but it tasted good.
I could taste a bit of Sambuca, and perhaps, plenty of other things.
Served in an even fancier way: in tea cups, at The Back Room.
We were both wearing sweaters.
You could not stop drinking.
The teacups clanged, and clanged again.
For the chances we took.
6.
“Here’s another one…”
You gave another tall glass of gin and tonic.
Rose wine. Champagne. Another gin and tonic.
A hotel lobby turned bar, full of people, with dimmed lights, and
140
electronic music.
Until my head was full, of chances with these distinctive flavours.
It was your last night in the city, but I could not stop drinking.
The glasses clanged, and clanged again.
For the chances we took.
Chances are—
chances were:
It was the first and only chance we would have ever taken.
“I got you a pen and a book,
So you can write about us — and the chance we took.”
You wrote, at the back of the greeting card, before you left.
And this is what I wrote about them chances.
141
MONKISH
Patricia Policarpio
The shaven monks clad in orange
solemnly march through fogs of incense,
which clouds their judgement, leaves them reeling.
But the silence must remain. Behind the
wooden grates, the tourists shuffle in place,
discomfort settling on their toes;
peering in, not quite sure what’s to see,
but four bald men ambling about.
Blinding light & the clicking sound echoes.
The cherry blossoms hanging overhead
suddenly become far more interesting.
For the devoted, it’s bowed heads and
mumbled prayers, hands clutched to their hearts,
asking for impossible things. Praying for a reprieve,
a divine intervention, a sign. Anything but
this.
The people watch as the monks kneel
for hours; until the sunlight dwindles,
extinguished like a flame
Fading lights, a dim sight. Solitude.
142
Soon, the temple is empty:
crickets bellowing into the quiet night,
fireflies lining the railings.
Finally, one, two blows to the gong
Resounding – the universe vows to never
forget the sound.
143
SAMPAGUITA
Patricia Policarpio
the sampaguita pours out ivory
liquid like rain spilling out
an upturned umbrella;
its lucid scent wafts through the air,
lingering.
the tips are branded with
golden drops from the heavens
white petals and yellow tips
resting alone in the budding grass,
it beckons for the myna bird that
circles the gray skies above,
seeking a refuge from the oncoming storm.
the sampaguita fears solitude,
doesn’t want to be alone
when the time comes for it
to be swept far away
in foreign lands & vast seas.
144
its beauty is ephemeral,
a fleeting notion, easily forgotten.
it weeps the loss of immortality
as specks of brown decorate its once pure petals.
one day, it shall fade and wilt,
cease to live on this plane of existence,
decay slowly, painfully,
wither alone in a gutter with only
the roaches as company.
but today, it gleams.
glows brighter than anything else,
smells of innocence and youth,
makes a young girl happy as she puts it in her hair
and lays under the bright, morning sun.
145
THIS ISN’T IT
Patricia Policarpio
i can feel my toes freeze
one by one
as i trudge the lonely journey
home
the horizon is no stranger;
solitude sings to itself
to keep me company
i hum along to the rhythm
of my pounding feet
i think about the lost days,
drowning in ignorance
slipping into oblivion.
i have found nothing in
this forsaken land and it
hurts to be left with nothing
but a loss for words
i drink the sacredness of a moment
to keep me breathing;
146
i inhale the staleness of sleep
to keep me from running
the air is bitter and stings my
eyes like loud, angry scorpions
and i curse out to the gods:
i ask them if they know how
it feels like to look misery in the eye
and strangle it for breakfast
i fight the screaming half-moon,
i give it pieces of my sun soul.
147
ODE TO THE
NIGHTMARKET
Cassandra Hsiao
you are the arch nemesis of silence
armed with arguments over pricing
twelve ringgits and mai yi, song yi.
you lift pop-up canopy tents
and listen to dialects as they wrap
a twine necklace around your lips.
your native tongue takes flight.
every night, you hum an electric blue,
an orange-peel moon in your dusky hair
no stars tonight.
you expand into spaces
next to the display of Dragon Eyes fruits
you could fit a child’s silhouette
but not their shadow.
someone takes refuge there now,
to evade the smell of durians
her father—your father—is selling.
148
he is engaged in a bargaining battle
with a pair of fierce eyes and a sharp tongue.
you never go to sleep.
your irises reflect tinted light
from paper lanterns that cast
pink and blue hues on the woman
selling chicken sizzling in a pot of oil,
covered in flakes of gold.
she switches between Bahasa Malay
and broken English that you taught her.
you hand out samples of fingernail-sized dried fish
with invisible scales and crunchy skeletons.
your forehead is sticky with sweat
and pieces of sugar art,
spider webbing lines of sucrose
what once used to shape a panda on a stick.
a young boy buys a secondhand small rug
you knitted yourself. you threaded
your favorite triangle-square pattern
he runs his fingers through a forest
of sunset red threads that cling to his blisters.
149
you are the yesterday with different faces,
the tourists with army green fanny packs,
orange four-legged stools,
and slightly burnt satay.
you are the streets in the day and the peddler at night
grounds footprinted and black gum-stained.
you are the bustling night
that city life attempts to recreate.
150
TONIGHT'S BLANKET IS
FRIED BATTERED FISH
Benedicta J. Foo
the bar is in the
oldest mall of this island, and the
waitress probably has us painted
by Picasso: eyes popped into mouth
into nose into teeth
into feet.
the reality is an adventure time shirt, blue
like a spy in one of those cool movies. i too
was dressed for the role: rare black in my
wardrobe, slapped to make an outfit paired
with soot onto eyelids, powdered snowy ash
with weapon of red lipstick. minor things reveal
us as Indonesian: a blackberry phone; approval
of tea brands; poetry slams a mere shadow of
the kerusuhan our parents both faced on
different sides.
151
my grandmother doesn't know
i am in a quiet bar
in the presence of protests, sheltered
under a $2 umbrella that does nothing to
conceal the storms collecting in my
throat. the hakka word she uses for
your people involves ghost; a slightly
harsher term is meant for me, for
girls who betray families and date ghosts.
she waits for me to come home before
dying and i wonder now if she would wait
as long if she knows i am seeing someone
from the wrong side of her history. i am
afraid that your skin is never white
enough, like the solid mass that
engulfs us in slumber. i am afraid
she will die another death when she
sees the silver bands that do not
brand our fourth fingers. i am afraid
i cannot tell her that the five minutes
you take to pray to God, i am praying
to a different God.
152
i am afraid that resting flowers
on dead bodies is actually
a sin as grave as the tombstone
that marks ours.
*
kerusuhan is the Indonesian word for riot.
153
WHAT MAKES ME
VIETNAMESE?
Linh Le
What makes me Vietnamese?
I judge those who trek through Southeast Asia whose lineage
does not lie in any of those countries
Pfft stupid Americans I scoff
Knowing full well that I am as American as they are
How Vietnamese do I have to be to be Việt enough?
Is it how I look?
If so, then my mom is less Việt than me because she’s half
white
Is it my command of the language?
If so then my mom is 100 times more Việt than I’ll ever be
Is it how I am raised?
Then what about those Vietnamese orphans brought over
during the Amerasian Act and adopted into white families?
Are they more or less Việt than I, they who carry more Việt
blood than I do
Yet their childhood holds no scent of incense or burning paper
money for the dead
Just American cartoons and pancakes and bacon
154
Do I have a right to “soul-search” in Vietnam like my nonVietnamese American peers who tell me
“Oh my gosh I wanna backpack in Southeast Asia, like
everybody does it. It’s so cool.”
In my heart I do because if it weren’t for the war, my parents
wouldn’t be here
And by some fate, if they had met in Vietnam then I would
have been born there
And knowing that in a universe out there, where a man in a
high castle controls the strings, I wouldn’t be VietnameseAmerican
Just Việt.
But then does that mean
In that universe
She is more Vietnamese than I am?
155
THE STARLIGHT STUDIO
Sumitra Selvaraj
A large black and white family portrait has always hung on a
narrow wall in my grandmother’s home. As a child I spent
every weekend at that house, and as soon as I arrived, I would
tear through the fruit tree laden garden with Ginger in howlygrowly pursuit, kick off my slippers at the porch and careen
into the house, up the stairs, down the corridor that smelt of a
heady mix of incense and Dettol, past the showcase with the
glassy eyed china figurines and brake to a stop outside her
bedroom door.
The portrait was just outside that door and was positioned at
adult eye level, but thanks to the fact that I physically took
after my mother’s side of the family, this posed no problem at
all. I would examine the photograph closely, trying to pick out
a detail that I might have missed out the last 1000 times I
had poured over the portrait.
It was a typical Indian family photograph from the 1960’s;
taken at a studio with the ubiquitous curtain and Grecian
column as a backdrop. The mother, my grandmother, is
156
seated with a bewildered baby on her lap, while my
grandfather stands proudly behind her with the rest of the
brood clustered round in their Sunday best behaviour.
My grandmother is likely wearing a colourful printed Saree,
which has been reduced to monochromatic splodges. Her
black walking sandals peek out rather sturdily from under the
hem of her Saree, which may have been a calculated move
on her part. She is also wearing too much jewellery, but I
doubt my grandfather would have been able to talk her out of
that.
Chandra Athe, my eldest aunt also wears a prominent gold
chain, because nothing says wealth like being able to dress
your children up in finery. But it is an advantage reserved for
the oldest child because anything more than that would have
been flaunting it, which is really quite unnecessary my
grandmother would have said. There is also a conspicuous
absence of traditional outfits for the children; my aunts are all
wearing knee length dresses while my uncles and father are all
in shorts and t shirts.
While it may have just looked like a simple family portrait to
mark the passage of time, this was in fact their first ever family
157
photograph with all 7 children present. There was no doubt
that a copy of the photograph would have been mailed to
admiring relatives back in India, so there needed to be
tangible evidence of Malayan success which of course
included gold jewellery, Bata slippers and ‘modern dress’.
My grandmother and Chandra Athe are the only 2 who are
clearly smiling, my middle aunt stands bolt upright with her lips
tightly pressed together, while my youngest aunt Rajes is
looking into the camera like a musang caught in the
headlights. Her right arm is raised and her fingers are
outstretched behind her, I suppose she was searching for the
comforting handhold of her older sisters. But don’t let Rajes
Athe’s uncertain demeanour fool you, barely a year after the
photograph was taken, the 6 year old Rajes dressed up in her
older brother’s clothes, walked out of the house and boarded
a bus from Gasing Road to Petaling Jaya Old Town.
3 hours of dramatic tension later, in an age without cell
phones or even house phones for that matter, my aunt was
reunited with my frantically furious grandmother at the Old
Town bus depot where the station master was keeping her
happy with orange juice and Jacob’s cream crackers. When
asked why she absconded like that, Rajes Athe replied that as
158
a brave child she was entitled to do anything and go
anywhere she pleased. She added that she was tired of
wearing dresses and that from that point forward she would
only wear shorts like her brothers.
But back when the family portrait was taken, Rajes Athe’s
willfulness had perhaps not yet materialised, except in trying
unsuccessfully to remove the lopsided hair bow that my
grandmother must have determinedly pinned to her unruly
curls.
My youngest uncle is the baby on my grandmother’s lap and
he stares off to the side in the perpetually startled, chubby
cheeked profile of portrait babies. My other uncle, Raja
Chittappa, has my favourite expression of them all; he glowers
at the camera in all of his 7 year old rage, which might have
also had something to do with the impossibly high waistband
of his shorts.
To my grandfather’s left, is my father, who on account of being
the oldest son, gets to occupy this prime position. Everyone’s
hands are visible in the photograph, except for my father and
grandfather’s which are hidden behind the shoulders of the
younger children in the foreground. My father once found me
159
staring at the portrait on the wall and remarked that although
the Photo Uncle had yelled at the children ‘ai yaaaa stand
straight with arms by the side!’, he had slid his hands into his
pockets in a jaunty act of rebellion. My grandfather had
noticed this and calmly tried to stop him just as the photo was
taken; and so unbeknownst to anyone my father and
grandfather ended up holding hands in their first formal family
portrait.
When my grandmother died last year, I took the portrait down
from outside her bedroom wall, having decided to make
copies of the photograph for all of my uncles and aunts. The
simple wooden frame was starting to crack in places, and I
held it carefully to avoid being skewered by splinters. The
metal tabs that held the wooden backing in place were rusted
and so I put the frame down on the floor to search for a tool
that would help me pry the photo free.
I entered the door to my grandmother’s bedroom and headed
straight for her desk drawer. It was as expected, a complete
mess. My grandmother had an abhorrence for throwing
anything away, and could have easily become the subject of a
reality TV series had something like that existed in Malaysia.
The drawer protested open and I rifled through random pages
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ripped from old calendars, yellowing receipts with most of the
information unreadable, ballpoint pens that had
haemorrhaged their contents into crumpled handkerchiefs, hair
and safety pins bent into submission, rolled up posters of
beatific deities and stacks of old passport photographs for
family members through the years. Deep in the recesses of the
drawer, my fingers made contact with a cool, metal object
and I drew out a small brass container with a lid. I opened it
to find kungkumum inside, the scarlet powder shockingly
vibrant amongst the decades of decay.
A small amount of the kungkumum stained my fingers as I
picked up the brass cover, its edge promisingly sharp as a pick.
Back outside the room, I sat on the floor and slid my makeshift
tool under the rusted metal tabs and lifted gently, but the tabs
still snapped and broke, leaving small copper imprints on the
4 sides of the backing. The wooden backing, photo and glass
all lifted cleanly away from the frame, but I realised I was
going to have a problem as soon as I saw that the
photograph didn’t slide away from the glass.
I tried to peel back the top corner of the photograph and to
my horror it tore in my hand, just a couple of millimetres, but
enough for me to immediately halt my clumsy assault. So
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there I sat on the floor with deconstructed photo frame in my
lap, wondering how to tell my father, uncles and aunts that I
had just desecrated a piece of family history, when I heard
footsteps coming up the stairs. I quickly tried to assemble the
glass fronted photo back into the frame and held it together
the best I could.
It was my Rajes Athe, who was nearly obscured by a mountain
of sheets that had been used to drape over the furniture during
the past 3 funereal days. She peered at the photograph in the
lap and I caught her first smile in what felt like forever.
‘I remember that day when we all went to the Starlight Studio
to have that picture taken,’ she beamed.
‘I wanted so badly to wear shorts and a shirt but Amma
forced me to wear that silly dress and then Chandra Akka
made it 10 times worse by cramming that stupid bow on my
head. I was so angry with her that I tried to pinch her when
Photo Uncle said smile so that she would have a funny face
but I didn’t reach her in time,’ giggled my aunt.
‘The Starlight Studio, Athe? The one in Old Town, near the
wet market?’ I asked.
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‘That’s the one darling,’ said my aunt as she shuffled off into
my grandmother’s bedroom.
That afternoon I drove out to Section 1 in Petaling Jaya and
found the Starlight Studio. After calling on my parking karma
and scoring a marked bay just metres away from the shop, I
made my way through the same doorway that my father’s
family would have stepped through 50 years earlier. Inside the
shop, the dimly uplit walls were plastered with family portraits,
graduation pictures and wedding photos of generations of PJ
folk. I showed the photograph to a twinkly eyed gentleman
behind the counter who smiled knowingly.
‘Uncle, can you help me save this picture please?’ I pleaded.
He asked me if I wanted a cup of Chinese tea and when I
said yes, he turned to a steaming pot behind him and lifted
the cover. He held the bottom left corner of the glass locked
photograph over the rising steam with one hand and deftly
poured me a cup with the other. He placed my tea before me
on the glass countertop and slid a piece of paper between the
glass and the photograph, and the photograph peeled away
from the glass just enough to expose a handwritten scribble in
faded blue ink.
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‘15265-90. Now I know who you are,’ he said with a grin.
Motioning me to drink my tea, he disappeared into a
darkened room at the back of the shop and reappeared 10
minutes later holding a cardboard box.
The box contained hundreds of negatives carefully preserved in
little paper envelopes, all painstakingly labelled with the date
the photograph was taken. It was all there, the family growing
and evolving through the years. Family portraits, graduation
pictures and wedding photos, caught in time as sepia tinted
memories. And yes, in an envelope marked 15625-90 was
the negative for that first family portrait.
I asked him to make me 7 copies of the photograph and to
encase each one in a simple wooden frame. He gently
smoothed the original photograph back onto the glass and
rummaged around his counter until he found a suitable sized
frame. In a minute, the photograph had been restored to a
wall worthy condition, and tucked safely into a paper bag.
He wrote me up a bill for the 7 copies and their frames, and
despite my protesting, he refused to charge me anything for
mending the original photo I came in with. Instead he waved
me out of the shop, reminding me to come back in a week’s
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time to pick up the framed copies and not to forget the
Starlight Studio if I needed a portrait taken of my own family.
I asked him if he’d be able to accommodate a Basset Hound
and Cocker Spaniel in his studio and he laughed and said
‘why not?’
Why not indeed, I asked myself as I stepped out into the
sunshine. I caught sight of the Bata shoe store across the road,
and next to it the bus depot teeming with people beginning
and ending all manner of journeys. I would write him a thank
you note, I decided, and turned to look back into the inky
space of the Starlight Studio.
I called out a hello and asked for his name, and heard in
response,
‘Ai-yaaaa, just Photo Uncle will do.’
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A BRIEF RESPITE
Rania Putri
My laptop breaks down.
When I look down at my hands I’m struck by the sudden
realisation that I have nothing to do – that so much of my life
depends on a collection of lights, just lights, programmed to
blink and un-blink like an illusion meant for hypnotism.
There exists a life before the illusion, projected on a lonely
screen somewhere in the recess of my memories. There is
nothing to do.
There is nothing else to do but to remember.
Take one.
My very first memory is of sitting on a scorching piece of wood,
baked under the unforgiving shine of the tropical sun. It must
have been mid afternoon. What little shade my hat provided
did not suffice to keep my feet from stinging, and I began to
cry.
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Someone whisked me away, and that was the end of that
memory.
Take two.
I remember running through fields of dried grass, a sad patch
of vacant land in front of our rented home – a small thing with
too much foliage, but it was home all the same. Just before the
sun dipped beyond the horizon the air would get lighter, and
we would run outside into the arms of the warm, welcoming
weather.
I remember that in the sad patch of vacant land there lived a
cluster of plants, wild and unruly, yet seemingly so content in
their own realm all the same, embodying the entire world’s
serenity within their intertwined roots and tangled stems. It was
a haven for a child’s curiosity – to poke and prod at plants I
knew not the names of until 14 years later. There were blades
of grass that would give me itches, plants with little thorns that
would find home between the threads of fabric, nestled
between the white and pink seams of my pajama pants.
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Unanimously, though, we had a favourite – a plant that curled
into itself upon the slightest touch, reminiscent of a prey weary
of potential harm the outside world posed, and thus sought
refuge within its own leaves. We spent hours traversing the
expansive field, eyes trained to spot the tell-tale rows of skinny,
jagged leaves on stubby shoots. We called them ‘shy
princesses.’
Its name is Mimosa pudica, native to South America.
Take three.
I remember one of mother’s many friends visiting one day,
apparently someone we had met before, but what was I to do
with that information? It made no difference. To a child, every
adult was interesting, each an enigmatic figure that possessed
wisdom of otherworldly qualities – especially those that offered
candy. Knowing charm was a surefire method to score some
confectionery I cranked up my extra best smile, not wanting to
lose out to my siblings.
What I got in greeting was ‘oh dear, your skin has turned so
dark. You used to be paler!’ No candy, only a look full of
sympathy and condescension that felt like an anchor dragging
across the bottom of an underwater reef. Unforeseeable,
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terrifying, and irreversible. My smile dimmed.
Detecting a threat, self-confidence packed up its things and
headed for the exit, slowly escaping the room of my mind.
An interlude,
I loved swimming. I loved running. I was never great at
football, but I enjoyed them all the same – perhaps out of
childish naivety. Mainly due to inexplicable appeals.
I didn’t realise the comment had found its way under my dark,
sun-kissed skin, like a pre-planned machination, until I began
to diverge – diversify – my interests to anything that would
shield myself from the tantalising rays of light.
And none of it was bad – reading, drawing, messing about in
the kitchen. Opening up Paint to sabotage the colouring
schemes of manually-drawn shapes, which then morphed into
moving figures; videos that took five entire minutes to load but
did not evoke complaints, because no one knew any better
back then; unfinished word documents of nonsensical
sentences with too much flair to make room for substance;
statuses that made my world seem a lot more important, and
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my actions validated. It earned a name later on; social media.
They weren’t bad at all.
So I let these fade into the background like unwanted elevator
music:
My first love, swimming,
My reckless companion, running,
My irrational attachment, football,
they didn’t matter because they made my skin darker. So I
shut the doors and stayed inside, drowning out the whispers
with my head submerged in a stream of pixels.
And later all they could talk was how much paler I had
become. How much more beautiful I had become. I look
away, because the compliments felt like spoils of war.
Not an interlude. Take four.
A river used to run behind the mosque near our house, shallow
170
enough for it to be safe but deep enough to get us screaming
in delight. I still remember.
We weren’t tenants there, merely visitors – the honour of
hosting belonged to the myriad of water spiders flitting across
the surface, leaving behind ripples like they had a story to tell.
It belonged to the slugs by the banks, the leeches lurking under
rocks and pebbles, and the dragonflies foraging for a friend
between scraggly bushes that seemed to prefer isolation. We
were guests who felt right at home – the hosts silent but
accommodating; present but never in the way.
Fast forward a few years later and a new cluster of luxury
homes on the hills just across the river banks stepped forward
with bravado to introduce itself. We were excited. They seemed
to be another inquisitive guest, ready to experience the
hospitality of the river life and its solitude, so different from the
incessant nagging of the world.
But its uninvited friends interrupted our morning playtimes.
Trucks stopped by the banks that heaved under its weight, did
not knock on doors but stormed in like thieves, dredging up
stones under which water spiders cower and tiny fish hide. They
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were no longer guests but now a raider, an invader – claws pry
away the soft beds of the river, waking up freshwater snails
from their slumber and usurping frogs from their thrones.
Introduction, obstruction and finally destruction. And we could
do nothing but watch in horror from the captivity of our car.
Soon, the stones disappeared, even the water buffalos on the
nearby paddy fields fled. Farmers closed up shop with their
rickety huts – under which they used to lie and seek
momentary shelter from the sun – in tow. The paddy field was
now just an expanse of cracked, brown land; the tenants had
long since parted with their homes, with not even a goodbye
fitted in edgewise.
The river ran dry, and our laughter soon died out, along with
the enchantment of a childhood avocation.
Final take, last chance.
They play in a loop – views unchanged, landscapes
untouched, like memories unaltered by time and progress.
I open my eyes. The screen is still antagonistically blank.
Taunting. An unfamiliar view outside reminds me that I am no
172
longer at home.
It is exhausting to remember. Maybe it’s best to turn around
and look ahead, to let time prod me along the ages, ambling
along a series of immortalised memories of the past
interweaved by forgettable analogue, digital components of
the present, inching slowly towards the end.
But it is exhausting to think about the end, too.
Kei Franklin
173
Kei Franklin
Kei Franklin likes creating. Whether in the realm of theatre,
poetry, dance, cooking, humor or conversation, she believes
that the best way to spend time is creating. For Kei, home is
between New Mexico, Swaziland, and Singapore. Kei is a
student at Yale-NUS College in Singapore, where she studies
Environmental Studies and Anthropology. She wants to learn
more about the space where environmentalism and art
intersect.
How does a vernacular aesthetic change with the spread of neoliberal
capitalism and hyper industrialization? How have we, as Southeast Asians,
knowingly or unknowingly welcomed a commercial and capitalistic aesthetic
into our landscapes, kitchens, wardrobes, and faces?
Kei Franklin
174
TANGKAK
Cassandra Hsiao
You are too young to relish the way the dirt road village never
changes, stagnant as cars chug by. Only trucks will stop here
at the end of the week to pick up Tangkak’s greatest export,
made of blood and sweat and aching backs. Before sunrise,
you skip school to watch your cousins cleave tree trunks,
breaking bark, spiraling slivers. Liquid latex drips into brown
cups from the metal tap stabbing the tree. They collect the
milky white substance in buckets, conduct a balancing act on
motorcycles as they speed off to the factories. Sun and
humidity coax beads of sweat. Your cousins measure and pour
the white latex into square containers, coagulate with acid and
feed the tofu sheets into a roller. The smell assaults your senses.
Uncle lets you grip the rough handle. You have to throw all
your weight forward to turn the rusty machine and flatten the
layers of rubber. You drape the thin sheets on the fence
outside. The smokehouses are next, and from a distance
passerby mistake the yellow-brown slabs for leather. If today is
pickup day, your cousins, elementary school dropouts, would
package their livelihood and put on their best suits and greet
the city men, but today is not pickup day, so the rubber hangs
from wooden beams, flapping in the wind. Your cousins head
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back home and fall asleep in their wrinkled, reeking clothes,
the odor clotting their bloodstreams.
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PASAR MALAM
Cassandra Hsiao
I shake my head to wake up, as if the pasar malam with
its blue tarps and packed crowds and smoke from slightly
burnt satay is just a dream. People fill every corner of the night
market, streaming through the narrow path carved by
riverbanks of easy-ups lining the street. Vendors shout and yell
and their voices spiral like a bakery’s sweet aroma, their tables
and carts overflowing with food that tastes like home.
Here, I blend in with my skin color, hair, eyes, language.
No one would notice if I was swept away in this mosaic river of
locals who brave this market rush hour everyday. My mom is
surveying an assortment of crispy fish balls on sticks. My
brother is next to her, sipping a grass jelly drink with boba. My
dad is out of sight, lost in this ocean of people—he must be
where the row of tents end, buying a bag of sweet rambutans.
White vans are closely parked behind each vendor’s tent.
One trunk is open. Inside, an unkempt array of crates staggers
under the weight of more crates, and dirty clothes, and rags,
and buckets. A little girl leaps out and dashes to help her
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mother prop up coconuts on top of a crushed wooden box,
ignoring splinters digging into calloused skin. Her cheeks are
ruddy under thin streaks of ash. Her father rotates between
flipping the food on the grill and barking at customers—timepressed and time-weary.
From dusky sundown to moonlit-night, this street is a
breathing torrent of bustling activity. It is all too easy to get
carried away by the fluid motion of customers sauntering from
vendor to vendor. I’m swerving through the flood of skin and
hijabs when I notice up ahead the crowd parting as a rock
divides the river. I move with the stream of people until I reach
the rock I can’t see. That’s when I nearly step on him.
He is sprawled on the floor, belly flat against the tar of
the road. His skin is brown and sunbaked and wrinkled, like
tree trunks. His arms are stretched in front of him, hands like
twisting branches clinging onto a tin can half-filled with dollar
bills and spare change. Where his legs are supposed to be is
only the tail ends of his dirt-covered shirt concealing two
stumps.
People step around the legless, homeless beggar. Their
eyes dart elsewhere—to the stand of socks, to the family buying
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Chinese yoyo’s, to the girls selling cheap jewelry. They swerve
out of his way as if he is Moses parting the Red Sea, only he
has no staff to give him dignity.
He is banging his head against the ground. Words have
escaped this man. “Please,” he has learned, is not sufficient.
The world has reduced him to the most primal form of
begging because pity is not enough to halt people in their
tracks and give him what they can. He has learned guilt is the
best incentive of all.
I take a step away from him, and another. My mind can’t
shake the image of him, but I am, like everyone, a creature
subject to the laws of inertia. It is hard to stop our movement
as we propel through life, or crowds, and before I know it, I
am tents away from him. I spot my dad, and the same inertia
propels my hand to tug on his sleeve. He takes out his wallet
and gives me what I asked.
Turning around is much harder. Now I am the helpless
one as I crouch in front of him and place the crumpled bill in
the can. His eyes meet mine, and for a moment I think I may
have stopped his vicious cycle of banging, but his head hits the
ground again. And again. And tomorrow when the pasar
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malam returns with its tarps and smoke and people pressed in
close proximity, he will still be here, gravel embedded in the
creases of his skin. I wish I could give him more than money
and a prayer. I picture myself catching his forehead before it
hits the ground, stopping his inertia, holding him close until he
stops shaking. I want to give him everything I have.
Instead, I stand up and push my way to my parents
buying charred satay. I cling onto them tightly, wrapping my
arms around them like a relentless tree branch as the crowd
sweeps by.
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QUESTIONS OF TASTE,
QUESTIONS OF HOME
Yen-Rong Wong
In Australia, Kuala Lumpur is often symbolic for the entirety of
Malaysia – the Petronas Towers, endless lines of traffic, a city
metropolis. But this is not the Malaysia I know. I know the reddybrown water of the Rajang River, the back streets of Bintangor,
which I always thought amusing because it sounded like bing
tang guo, ‘frozen sweets’, the quaint wooden house in Sarikei
where an old lady charged my mother an extra ringgit to cut
my hair because it was so long and thick. My Malaysia is dirt
roads, free roaming chickens, the clearest of clear night skies,
and perhaps most importantly, a unique cacophony of food.
It is this food I carry around with me today, I my apartment in
inner city Brisbane. My freezer is stuffed full of kong biang,
though they taste best when fetched straight from the oven.
We’re that weird family that buys several kilograms of it to take
home, mainly because we don’t trust my sister not to have eaten
most of it before we even get on a plane back to Australia. Kaya
toast is almost a staple in my diet, and I prefer peanut butter
and kaya on bread rather than peanut butter and jam. Pek tin
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yok, or eight herb soup, was a staple during the colder winter
months, when my sister and I still lived at home. My love for
food from Sarawak is possibly my only true connection to my
parents’ homes.
Many of my earlier memories of Malaysia are tied to food. Ever
a fruit fiend, I discovered starfruit and dragonfruit in stalls by the
road. I devoured satay sticks by the dozen at a party in Penang,
loved the simply prepared fern at my auntie’s house in Sarikei,
and endured hours in a car that stank of durian. I drank sugar
cane juice from a plastic bag, and had to fight my sister for that
last pork bun. But food also taught me that Malaysia wasn’t
really my home. I could try as hard as I liked, but I didn’t really
belong – however much I loved the hustle and bustle of the
markets, and the serenity of the countryside.
It was a blow, softened only by my youth. I was seven, and my
sister five. I think we may have been in Kuching. It was the first
time I’d seen chickens wrapped in newspaper, the first time I’d
smelled the saltiness of openly cured fish. It was the first time our
mother had told us, “don’t speak when you get out of the car”,
before we ventured into the markets. “Even though you can
speak Mandarin, they will know you’re not from here”. Dutifully,
we kept our mouths shut.
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Here, in Australia, my otherness isn’t so apparent, but the
reactions are there all the same. There are people who are
surprised that I can speak English, and others who are surprised
when I can speak Mandarin. After struggling through attempts
to pronounce my name and the inevitable “so where are you
really from?”, it often seems a great let down when my answer
contains the word “Malaysia”. Many people in Australia, I have
found, do not know very much about Malaysia at all, and then
the conversation dies, or peters off into another, more accessible
topic.
If I am foreign in Malaysia, and foreign in Australia, then who
am I, really?
*
I imagine I will be wrestling with this question for years to come,
even though I know there will never be a concrete answer. For
me, and other first generation Australian born Chinese,
Malaysian or otherwise, the issues we face are not those of our
parents’. Integration and assimilation are not at the forefront of
our minds, but concepts of identity continue to be complicated.
We have to learn to negotiate the expectations of two opposing
cultures, and this becomes increasingly difficult with the onset of
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puberty, and the perceived relaxation of rules where our friends
are concerned. Stereotypes are used as schoolyard taunts, and
it is no wonder many end up picking a ‘side’ in their early
schooling years. Saturdays are filled with obligatory Chinese
lessons, which at the time, seem like a waste of perfectly good
Saturday mornings.
But I can truly say I would be a different person if my parents
hadn’t instilled Malaysian-Chinese culture into my life. I wouldn’t
have done my grade two school project on orang-utans, and I
don’t think I would be as enchanted by folk tales, myths, and
legends. Learning to read and write Chinese is an exercise in
etymology, and this has bled into my love for English.
I have been told that my ability to live within the interstices of
Western and Eastern cultures is a gift. This may be true, but the
world has yet to move on from strict delineations of binaries. It
is easier to distinguish between black and white than it is
between shades of grey – and it was the world that told me I
was different, that I didn’t quite fit. I never wanted pale skin or
blue eyes or blonde hair, but I was never Asian enough for the
Asians, and never Australian enough for the Australians.
*
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I didn’t realise the importance of food on my cultural identity
until I moved out of home. The need to make my own breakfast,
lunch, and dinner meant that I turned to easier, Western options.
I’d need to make an hour and a half round trip to my parents’
in order to get that little taste of home.
The relative dearth of Malaysian restaurants and eateries in
Brisbane is upsetting, especially considering the number of
Malaysian and Singaporean people I’ve met during my time in
the retail and hospitality industries. Many traditionally
Malaysian foods are lumped into the “Asian” category, and
cannibalised in order to be more appealing to Western palates.
Ironically, Australia claims to be a multicultural country, but it
still (whether subconsciously or not) exoticises Asian foods. I
remember goji berries making their emergence in health food
stores as the “next superfood”, and being just slightly amused
when I realised they were my favourite part of mum’s traditional
chicken soup.
There are particular foods and dishes I can only name in
foochow, my parents’ native dialect, and this makes it difficult
to find recipes to replicate. Even then, there is a slim chance it
will taste the way I want it to taste – there is nothing quite like
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freshly made noodles, and broth prepared in a small, humid
stall complete with the to and fro of family banter.
A tiny place near our family home that makes kampua, kolo
mee, and dian mian ngu opened last year. My father has
already made friends with the owner, and I’m pretty sure my
parents would eat there every second day if they could. A small
but important part of Sarawak has come to them, and they are
able to share this with my sister and I without an eight-hour flight
and a half hour car ride. I imagine they’re chasing a piece of
home – a place where they can speak their native dialect and
eat delicious food. There is not much more one could ask for, in
a country that is not truly their own.
*
I live in a hybrid world. It is a world where I enjoy congee mixed
with Vegemite, where I switch between Chinese and English
without even thinking. It is a world that is ever developing, ever
changing. I don’t know what might come next, because it is
uncharted territory. I know it will be difficult, and I might never
truly fit in, or resolve the two clashing cultures in which I have
been raised. My idea of home is ever changing – at times,
frighteningly so – and I have almost no control over where it will
186
take me next. My Australia might not be my friends’ Australia,
but it is one I have built for myself.
Until then, I will have those kong biang in my freezer – little hard
baked circles of dough that will always remind me of family,
regardless of the place they decide to call home.
187
CONTRIBUTORS
ALANDA KARIZA is a 20-something Indonesian writer. She has
published nine books since the age of 14, including two memoirs
called “DreamCatcher” and “Travel Young”, both of which were
shortlisted in the Indonesian Readers Awards 2012 and 2014,
respectively. Alanda has just released her first English novel, “Beats
Apart”, and is currently based in Melbourne.
ALLY ANG is a queer person of color from New England with
Chinese-Indonesian roots. Ally’s work has been published in
Vagabond City Lit, Tinderbox Poetry Journal, Crab Fat Magazine,
and more. Their first chapbook, Monstrosity, is forthcoming from
Damaged Goods Press in summer 2016.
ANDREA MACALINO graduated with honors from the Ateneo
de Manila University. In 2011, she was a fellow for fiction at the
Silliman University National Writers Workshop. In 2012, she
published her first collection of short stories under Boutique Books, for
the 3rd Better Living Through Xeroxography (BLTX), a small press
expo. She is currently working on her M.A. in Comparative Literature
at the University of the Philippines, Diliman. She also serves as
editorial assistant for Kritika Kultura.
ARIF UTAMA is from Bandung, and is writer, a thinker, a graphic
designer, photographer, a videographer, and public relations student.
188
ASTER V. DELGADO is a Filipina lesbian artist based in
Hamburg. She started to paint in 1996 while she was still working at
the Women's Crisis Center in Manila. From the beginning, her art has
consciously dealt with the situation of women/lesbians. An additional
theme is animal life and nature. Her often colorful and clear images
reflect her political visions, her fantasies, dreams and passions. Aster
has exhibited her work in the Philippines, in Switzerland, Germany
and the Czech Republic.
BEN AGUILAR graduated with a degree in Health Sciences and
a Minor in Creative Writing from the Ateneo de Manila University,
Quezon City. Currently taking up a degree in medicine at Xavier
University – Jose P. Rizal School of Medicine, Cagayan de Oro City.
BENEDICTA J. FOO writes mostly about lonely people and
lonely places, and is a part of Burn After Reading, a collective of
young writers. Her work has been published in We Are A
Website, Rollercoasters and Bedsheets: A Sex Anthology in Minutes,
and won merit at the inaugural National Poetry Festival in Singapore.
BOBBY SUN is a Chinese-Malaysian writer and spoken word poet
who grew up in Singapore and is studying in London. His work has
previously been published in the inaugural Singapore Poetry Writing
Month anthology (as Robert Bivouac) and Rosarium Publishing’s
anthology of Southeast Asian steampunk, “The Sea Is Ours: Tales
from Steampunk Southeast Asia” (as Robert Liow).
CARL LORENZ CERVANTES has a blog at
sloppydasein.wordpress.com. Carl likes spaghetti.
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CASSANDRA HSIAO is a junior in the Creative Writing
conservatory at the Orange County School of the Arts. She is an
editor of her school’s award-winning art and literary magazine,
Inkblot, and has been nationally recognized by the Scholastic Art and
Writing Awards as well as the National Student Poets Program. Her
plays are currently being produced by theaters across the nation. Her
poetry, essays and reviews have appeared in The Los Angeles Times,
TeenReads, Jet Fuel Review, Feminine Inquiry, Aerie International, and
more.
CRISTINA MARIA CHIOREAN has lived in Yangon since June
2014. She is an amateur photographer and owner of the blog
Myanmar Life and Colours. She wrote a book about her first year in
the country called Blended Feelings: My First Year in Myanmar.
DANNA PEÑA Danna Peña is a constant traveler from the
Philippines. She regularly steps out of her boundaries and immerses
herself in anything and everything that gives her inspiration, may it be
in the form of reaching the peaks of tall mountains, diving in deep
waters or simply by perusing thought-provoking books. As a digital
native, she believes that great things can be achieved for society
through combining technology and media. Her insatiable thirst for
creating compelling and valuable content, writing and taking
photographs led to the birth of her little nook on cyberspace found at
www.dannapena.com.
DRIMA CHAKRABORTY is a genderfluid Indian living in
Singapore. They are currently studying English Literature at the
National University of Singapore and think they must be horribly
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boring if work and play intermingles so frequently in the form of
poetry for them. Nevertheless, they also like playing video games and
political activism.
DYASANTI VIDYA SAPUTRI, in the wise words of Nick Miller, is
"the worst breed of human." Often found with a lot of opinions and
pent-up anger. A 20-year-old with a lot of figuring out to do.
EVE SHI is an Indonesian fangirl and writer. Her Indonesian YA
novels are Aku Tahu Kamu Hantu (I know you're a ghost), Lost,
Unforgiven, and Sparkle. Her short stories in English are published in
Insignia: Southeast Asian Fantasy and Flesh: A Southeast Asian
Urban Anthology.
JAN ANGELIQUE DALISAY is a 27-year-old copywriter from
the Philippines. She loves to take quiet walks, listen to K-pop songs,
and write poems about life as a night-shifter in Metro Cebu. Her
essays are constantly filed in her blogs,
thegirlwhothinksanawfullot.wordpress.com and
nobodyknowsjan.wordpress.com.
JEMIMA YONG, born 1990, is a Sarawakian photographer and
performance maker based in Singapore and London. She is
interested in developing the role of the photographer in live
performance and studying the relationship between live culture and
visual literacy. She has exhibited in Singapore, the UK, and has been
published in The Times, The Guardian, Swazi Observer, Straits Times
and Sydney Morning Herald. She is also photographer in residence
at Exeunt Magazine.
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KARI ASTILLERO is just a little girl working to live the dream and
is a second year student majoring in Journalism. She lives in a city
from Philippines with her family but wish to live alone and be
independent – for now no. She loves to write and talk about nature,
music and the universe. She hopes to have her own published poetry
book someday and a cozy home surrounded by trees and flowers.
KEI FRANKLIN likes creating. Whether in the realm of theatre,
poetry, dance, cooking, humor or conversation, she believes that the
best way to spend time is creating. For Kei, home is between New
Mexico, Swaziland, and Singapore. Kei is a student at Yale-NUS
College in Singapore, where she studies Environmental Studies and
Anthropology. She wants to learn more about the space where
environmentalism and art intersect.
KHAIRANI BAROKKA is an Indonesian writer, poet, artist, and
disability and arts (self-)advocate. Among her honors, she was an
NYU Tisch Departmental Fellow for her Masters, Emerging Writers
Festival’s (AUS) Inaugural International Writer-In-Residence,
Indonesia’s first Writer-In-Residence at Vermont Studio Center, and
one of UNFPA’s Indonesian “Inspirational Young Leaders Driving
Social Change”. Her accessible poetry-art book Indigenous Species is
forthcoming from Tilted Axis Press in 2016, and she is the co-editor
with Ng Yi-Sheng of HEAT, an anthology of Southeast Asian urban
writing.
KOGGELAVANI MUNIANDY is a freelance photographer
whose forte is capturing portraits. Her photos were featured in an
international arts event by Kakiseni in 2012 and her portraits have
also been featured in Parenthood Magazine. She is working on a
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book of short stories accompanied by her photographs. She is also
the co-founder of GoodKids, a social enterprise.
LEON WING lives in Malaysia. He used to work in technology,
writing programs, and such. He sometimes takes poems apart and
puts them back together on his poetry blog.
LINH LE is a Vietnamese-American woman born, raised, and
currently living and working in the Bay Area. Linh recently had writing
published on HelloGiggles, Femsplain, and Teen Vogue. Linh is
particularly interested in exploring the dynamics of living on the
hyphen and what straddling that line means as a 2nd Gen
immigrant.
MADINA MALAHAYATI is a fifteen year-old girl that lives in a
country that doesn’t automatically exist inside your head. Spends her
time crying over the currency rates of rupiah to US dollars and angrily
staring at the prices of books in her OpenTrolley want list.
MARC DE FAOITE was born in Dublin and lives in Malaysia. His
short stories and essays have been published both in print and online
in Malaysia, Singapore, France, India, and Ireland. Tropical
Madness, a collection of his short stories, was longlisted for the 2014
Frank O’Connor International Short Story Prize.
MARY ALINNEY VILLACASTIN is a Filipina-American
cosmonaut swimming space-time sideways through decolonized
dreams. A graduate of anthropology from Barnard College and
endlessly enrolled student of Earth, M.A.V. experiments with autoethnographic records on the road (RealityEnRoute.blogspot.com). Last
based in Oaxaca, Mexico and South Florida, xXx is currently
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traveling, re-writing virtual versions of various voyages, composing
past origins in present future tense. Zer fragment prose-poetry may
be found in Local Nomad, Alien Mouth, Epigraph Magazine and
Minor Literature[s].
MEERABELLA JESUTHASAN is in college studying History.
She is from Malaysia and France and grew up in Singapore. She
lives in the U.S., but only for now.
NASIR NADZIR is from Kepala Batas, Pulau Pinang, Malaysia.
Nasir has been making artwork based on endangered wildlife in
Malaysia aimed at advocating for wildlife conservation.
NICA BENGZON graduated from the Ateneo de Manila
University with a bachelor’s degree in Literature (English) and a minor
degree in Creative Writing. She currently teaches composition and
literature courses at the Ateneo while pursuing an MA in Creative
Writing at the University of the Philippines, Diliman. Her poems have
appeared in Heights and The Philippines Graphic, and are
forthcoming from Paper Monster Press’s Atlantis. She writes for her
siblings, and for Isabel, Mirick, Kathleen, Paolo, Deirdre, Stefani, and
Maria.
PATRICIA POLICARPIO is a poet who hails from the Philippines.
If she's not experiencing yet another existential crisis, she's probably
wondering what's for dinner. Her work has been published in COE
Review, Hypertrophic Literary, East Coast Ink Magazine,
Degenerates: Voices For Peace Anthology, The Wait Poetry
Anthology, and other online literary platforms.
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RANIA PUTRI owes much to Indonesian literature, artwork, pop
culture and guilty-pleasure TV shows for helping her maintain ties
with the motherland, having lived almost two-thirds of her life in
Qatar. With a penchant for traveling and human interactions being
her main muse, she hopes to one day traverse the many hidden
alcoves of treasure all over the world – both in nature and in people.
She dreams of becoming wise enough to inspire others just as much
as the world has inspired her. For now, however, Rania is still battling
high school in pursuit of her dream to study Economics – all the while
carefully nurturing her passion for writing.
ROBYN ANGELI SAQUIN is a Filipino visual artist currently
pursuing a degree in Information Design in the Ateneo de Manila
University. She has previously been published in Heights Vol. LXII
no.3 and Vol. LXIII no. 1.
RODRIGO DELA PEÑA, JR. is a Filipino writer based in
Singapore. He is the author of Requiem, a chapbook. His poems
have been published in Rattle, QLRS, Hayden’s Ferry Review, We
are a Website, and other journals and anthologies. He is a recipient
of the Palanca Award for Poetry in 2015.
SUMITRA SELVARAJ has spent the last 15 years immersed in
Broadcasting and Public Relations in Malaysia. She is currently the
Executive Producer of an English language television talk show on the
ASTRO satellite network. Sumitra lives in Petaling Jaya with her
husband, a cranky Basset Hound, and a hearing and sight impaired
Cocker Spaniel.
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TEH SU CHING writes poetry, plays, screenplays, and short
stories. Her work has been screened, published, and performed in
London, New York, Telluride, Glasgow, Shanghai, and Singapore.
Sometimes, she works on the green typewriter she stole from her late
grandpa’s room.
YEN-RONG WONG is a 21 year old student in Brisbane who is
sick of people mispronouncing her name. She is currently attempting
to write an Honours thesis, with a view to focus on Southeast Asian
Australian female fiction in further academic study. She also has a
keen interest in science communication, which will probably please her
parents somewhat as they weren’t too pleased with her transition from
‘aspiring scientist’ to ‘aspiring English Literature academic’.
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