I refuse to draw ethical conclusions from
moulded wood. Tell the truth about “shattered
histories”, tell me stories of the seed that gave birth

 

to forests. One: where a branch is slow-roasted over
a flame, charcoaled, packaged, sold to school-
children told to “SIT. please,” sketch this.

 

Two: where soft logs are cured, pulped,
chemicalized, bleached and browned again to
taste, cut, pretending, like us, to be perfectly blank

 

slates ready to receive. Three: where old jungle falls
(and no-one listens) into the “hollow curve” of
earth and gathers, peating to coal, to black

 

gold, to poison gas, set aflame and twisted
into artificial lightning, speeding through wires,
powering pixels that flicker at a touch. Speak to me

 

of the mind that saw these bones, these ashes, and
resurrected thoughts of itself “proud against
the wall”. There are no chairs here.

Tse Hao Guang is interested in form and formation, creativity and quotation, lyrics and line breaks. His work has appeared or is forthcoming in Ceriph, Coast, QLRS, OF ZOOS, The Ayam Curtain, This City is a Strange Song, Microcosmos, Symbal, Dear Wallflowers, after|thought, after|thought Oxford, Project Petua, and LONTAR. He is involved in the Mentor Access Project under the guidance of Alvin Pang. A chapbook, hyperlinkage, is forthcoming from Math Paper Press. He can be found online here.

 

 

Loh Guan Liang  is the author of the poetry collection Transparent Strangers (Math Paper Press, 2012). His works have appeared in various journals, including Ceriph (Singapore), Crack the Spine (US), Kin Poetry Journal (US), Mascara Literary Review(Australia) and Quarterly Literary Review Singapore. Guan Liang currently lives in Singapore.

 

 

Jean Hui Ng  believes Sofia Coppola.

<<