Popagandhi

I had the good pleasure to read at ContraDiction again this year. After a two year absence from it (was always abroad every time they came calling), it was a pleasant surprise to see the event play to a packed venue with plenty of talented performers. We do have great talent in the queer community, and there are tons of events at this year’s Indignation. From the introductions and some conversations it seems there are several books in the making from this very young, very prolific group, so that’s plenty to look out for in the Singapore literary space. For the record, I am also working on a book. Fiction.

I read an oldie-but-goodie, the 2006 piece posted here, entitled Why I Am Still A Feminist. Lainie rolled her eyes and drank her chai quietly when she heard the title earlier in the afternoon — she said it was “soooooooooooooo dyke”. I know. New readers of this site probably would have missed it unless you’ve trawled through my sucky archives, it’s worth a look. It felt different reading something I wrote at age 21, but the general message remains.

I’d also written a small piece as a surprise for someone who’d flown in as she says she is my “number one biggezt fan” (though Vicnan protests this isn’t possible). I haven’t written any serious poetry in years so it makes no pretensions towards it — it was first written in a little boat while getting out of the dense interiors of Borneo after an amazing week there, and completed almost entirely in the Notes function of my Nokia N95 while poking at fantastic Basque pintxos at Taktika Berri. Since this was written in (and read out of a mobile phone) it has zero poetic structure. Each stanza was even deliberately vetted to be… Twitter-length. The plan was to surprise the special person in my life with a reading at ContraDiction, but if she could not appear it would fit nicely into five text messages, real time. Through some miracle, the beautiful girl for whom it was written managed to touch down and come speeding from the airport about five seconds before I started on this one. (coughs)

Entalau

1.
What they have in days
are weeks for us. Weeks with you,
mostly apart. Like our Borneo we are jungles, weeds.
Ferocity. Or waters still beneath
and quiet stars.

2.
Sometimes the silence, the jungles, the rivers we don’t know.
It is all wrong, all of it.
We escape five to a boat, and hope.
The winds, the waves, the misery,
Everything. In the unbroken darkness,
in this narrow boat, even if
it is only your fingertips pressed against my own —
you point the way home.

3.
We crash into rocks on the way home,
like it happens everyday. Life is elsewhere;
this morning it’s here, you said. Last night
I leaned back on the boat and you were there
wet hair around my neck.
Crickets. Silence. Stars.
A life form beneath us turning.
The jungle burns
but not as much as how I burn for you.

Notes: Entalau is a longhouse in Sarawak, in Skrang district. This is the first in the series. Others to follow in the series have yet to be written, but their titles have already been decided. #2: Babi Mati, #3: Jamban, #4: Pochor-Pochor #5 Joget Ekonomi. Haha!