Merdeka Issue August 2008

The Merdeka Issue http://themalaysianpoeticchronicles.blogspot.com

August 2008

'Birthing' by Leon Wing

Birthing by Leon Wing

Within the netted pyramid she Slumps, the ancient book forgotten. Dead words war Into the dreams of the Nile courting her with carrion eye Lids from vultures’ leavings. Without, the screaming nuzzles through Feathered downs of drowsiness. She Hears the wake of crying In a litter of whistling Breaths. The mother coos The new births into mews. © 2008 Leon Wing

Creative process: In the first two lines of the first stanza the rhythm is regular : in the first line, regular rising tones – unstress then stress; in the second, a falling tone, the stressing scheme reversed. There are around 4 beats in each line, with some unstress to stress promotion on particular syllables, to maintain the tone schemes. I place ‘she’ right at the end of line 1 to evoke a breathing out sound, usually heard when one is sleeping deeply. I break from these regular rhythms in the 3rd line with three stressed monosyllabic words. You read them slowly: I want to make the reader feel something is ominous in ‘Dead words war’. The pace picks up in the next line, which has only one stressed word, ‘dreams’, right centre of it. The speed rushes at the start of this line, and slows at ‘dreams’, and picks up again after it. This gives the effect of a rushing about in her dreams. The last two lines in this stanza is Dali-esque: the scene is weird and unreal. You see the Nile trying to seduce her with some nasty torn flesh from remains of some vultures’ scavenging meal. For the last line here I try to evoke some lulling effect by using a lot of ‘l’ sounds. In the next stanza a crying sound outside of her bedroom (or her sleep/dream) is trying to break into her consciousness. In the first two lines I repeat the rising and falling tone schemes of the first two lines of the first stanza. I also place ‘she’ at the end of a line, instead of in line 1, in line 2 this time. Finally she wakes to the sound of first breaths during birthing, like the whistling sound you hear when you squeeze the air out of a beach ball. We now see, or rather, hears a mother making soothing sounds to her new litter. The nearly but not actual half rhymes of ‘coos’ and ‘mews’ signal the end of the piece. Leon Wing writes about poems for Puisi-Poesy, http://puisipoesy.blogspot.com, and has his own blog. He has written for men's magazines like Men's Health and Plan B, gadget magazines like S&P, Surf! and Mobile World. He sometimes writes for StarMag, reporting (http://thestar.com.my/lifestyle/story.asp?file=/2008/5/18/lifebookshelf/21221716&sec=lifebookshelf) , and reviewing books (http://thestar.com.my/lifestyle/story.asp?file=/2008/7/27/lifebookshelf/1659814&sec=lifebookshelf). He has a short story (http://www.malaysiakini.com/rentakini/36859) published in Malaysiakini's Rentakini Cerpen. He currently has a few works of fiction, poetry and essay in a new literary magazine Elarti:2.

'Untitled' by Ted Mahsun

UNTITLED by Ted Mahsun It was already a week into the month of Ramadan, but all Afiq could find in the dark corners of the sprawling town built on the back of the humongous beast Buraq was water to break his fast every evening. The water, whenever it was found, was not clean, and Afiq often had to lick it off the most repugnant of surfaces, such as the walls of an abandoned hut, rotting away, as walls made from the skins of long ago deceased tics were wont to do after a brief period of time; or in huge acrid beads of sweat in between the the beast’s fur, where ever he could find it growing –sometimes in between buildings, other times in between blades of the beast’s fur, growing like tall blades of grass in patches very much like small fields, on the outskirts of the vast decaying Town. It was the beads of sweat that kept Afiq going on. He had no doubt the odious and vile liquid excreted from underneath the beast’s back contained some vitamins and minerals – though perhaps limited, it was enough to keep his body alive. His, and other food scavengers, as well. The problem with the fur patches outside the Town was that it was getting harder and harder every day of Ramadan to find a big enough bead of beast sweat to last until the next breaking of fast. Competition was stiff. Fights often broke out amongst the scavengers and the militant Jayshists. Afiq had no intention of getting himself mixed up in any of these squabbles. He knew that in his weak state, he would most probably die if ever he got into a fight. That was why he kept his searches mostly within the confines of the Town. But that was before he stumbled into the house of the Imam. In his stupor, brought on by his extreme hunger, he had clumsily dragged himself into a district of the Town where he had not gone before. In this part of town, the houses and buildings were made of a different material, something more rugged and longer-lasting than the skins of tics. He did not know what it was but as he slid his palms on the walls while walking between the buildings, the walls felt coarse and slightly elastic, very much unlike the brittle and smooth qualities of tic skins. Even the ground felt different. In other parts of the Town,

the ground was soft and springy, as a Buraq’s back should be. But here it was solid and hard and shiny. The musty stench in the air quickly gave way to a fragrant aroma, something Afiq’s nostrils had not had the luxury of smelling before. His nose clearly could not cope with this new sensation. Small streams of blood flowed out of his nostrils. He wiped the blood with his grimy wrist and licked it. His mouth started watering. He quickly swallowed the saliva produced. He was not one to waste moisture. He followed the aroma to an open doorway. Inside he saw a sparse room, decorated only with a table and two accompanying chairs, as well as a small black stove in the far corner. On top of the stove, there was a wok, and it was being used to deep-fry something. Attending to the wok was a tall man wearing a white skullcap. This was the Imam. The Imam turned around and saw the skinny figure of Afiq standing in the doorway. If the Imam had any change of expression, he did not reveal it. Afiq expected the Imam to burst into a rage, a reaction he was used to getting whenever he appeared in strange doorways. But the Imam did no such thing. He turned his back once again to Afiq and resumed giving his full attention to the wok. © 2008 Ted Mahsun

Creative process: The genesis of this story came to be when I was reading up mythological or magical/fantastic elements in Islam. One element that I became very fascinated with was the magical flying horse, Buraq, with which the Prophet Muhammad rode to Jerusalem from Mecca in one night. Despite being able to fly, it was said that this horse had an incredible speed, "who would place its hoof at a distance equal to the range of vision." (According to a hadith.) Muslims know the rest of the story: at Jerusalem, Muhammad was brought up to the heavens and he goes through something very similar to Danté. (In fact, some people think Danté could have very much been influenced by this story of Lailatul Qadar.) Anyways, back to the Buraq. The ability for the Buraq to "place its foot at a distance equal to vision" made me realise that a gigantic beast of incredible size could probably do the same. And from there I wanted to write about a gigantic beast called Buraq, so huge that humans could build large settlements on its back and never realise they were on a back of an animal. In this story, I also wanted to inject a sort of mystical Islamic essence, not unlike the Arabian Nights. I wanted to write fantasy that didn't have the tropes of Western Fantasy. I didn't want to go on the same route as Tolkienism. Neither did I want to go down the more modern fantasy tropes now currently popular in the West, such as Steampunk or New Weird. I wanted to create something different and underused, and potentially as magical as all the other fantasy tropes. That is why there are militant Jayshists (not necessarily an analogy for al-Qaeda or the Taliban or similar Islamic militants) and there is an imam deepfrying something in a wok. These characters are also there for me to upturn present stereotypical thinking of Muslims...although I haven't got that far in the story for me to get to yet. The wok is also interesting to me because it signifies something that's very Eastern to me. We Asians like to deepfry our food in woks, and perhaps whatever it is that's being cooked in the wok will be vital to the story, if ever I finish it.

Ted Mahsun is a literary critic, who is a "Reader, Writer, Malaysian. Partial to Haruki Murakami and prone to malapropisms." Visit his blog, http://tedmahsun.blogspot.com/.

Breadfruit by Yusuf Martin

Breadfruit by Yusuf Martin

There were times I would sit and stare out at the spindly breadfruit tree, knowing how hard the soil is and just how difficult it must be for those roots to push against the compacted soil; aided only by infrequent rain and chicken drop pellets. Other times the harshness of the sun would prevent my gaze, even if I cupped my hand over my eyes, trying to shield them from its rays, but still the blazing sun would strike through my pinkened fingers and pain my eyes, making them dry. In the evenings, when it was a little cooler outside, I would sit in the gazebo and listen to the children playing by the ditch. I could hear their little squeals and squeaks of joy as they played with the water, or traced patterns on the hard earth then run laughing up the road to see the two white ducks waddling, uncaring. I’m not sure if I missed her most then, or all those other times she was away. Maybe it was all of them. Maybe I just couldn’t find one single occasion when I missed her more than any other, they were all equally as lonely, melancholy. I couldn’t tell her. I couldn’t or wouldn’t put that burden upon her. I didn’t want her to feel bad about leaving us. I wanted her to know that she was missed sufficiently, enough, but no more. I felt, in a way that was my duty towards her, to swallow the emptiness I felt when she wasn’t there, I owed her that, surely. That day, before she left again, we walked in the drying garden as she pointed out a fruit bud on the breadfruit tree, smiled, put her hand on mine, looked me straight in the eyes and said, I know.

© 2008 Yusuf Martin

Creative process: I wanted to write a prose poem/ flash fiction story about love. Often you only get to realise how much you love someone by how much you miss them when they are not there, so I projected that into a story about missing someone, loving and in a strange way fulfillment too. The dryness of the garden is barrenness, the feeling of being drained, dry, not fulfilled until your lover is with you, empty, thirsting but not necessarily in a passionate way. The heat of the sun is not the heat of passion but the heat of longing, of wanting, in a way it is IBAADAT - devotion. Why the breadfruit tree, to me a pomegranate would have been too obvious and too much about passionate love, too much about eros and not enough about agape. The two words which make up the name are enough bread, staple, stable, that which sustains. fruit a delight, something which has the very seed of being, a tinge of eternity The breadfruit tree, like love, is fast growing, and like love the wood is hardy and its fruit sustains life.

Old Hippy, former bookbinder repairer and restorer, dustman, road sweeper, factory worker, mental hospital porter, graphic designer, digital artist, social worker, guest curator at one of London’s most prestigious museums, now exclusively writes short stories and essays from his country home overlooking lakes in the South East Asian countryside. Yusuf was born in London but lived mostly in East Anglian, England, briefly in India and has finally retired and settled in rural Malaysia, amidst the water buffalo and civets. He has written several short stories published in collections in Malaysia including Silverfish New Writing 5 (2006); Silverfish New Writing 7 (2008); Urban Odysseys, due shortly from MPH; and an essay for New Malaysian Essays 2, due next year by Mata Hari. Yusuf is currently putting the finishing touches to a book of short stories about kampung life in Malaysia (Kampung Tales) , writing more fantasy stories about a bomoh (shaman) called Melvyn, magic and ghosts (Melvyn the Bomoh) and a novel based upon his social work experiences (The Unsocial Worker). Yusuf's sites: http://mondaymelvyn.blogspot.com/ http://fatmankampung.blogspot.com/ http://correspondences-martin.blogspot.com/

"Poem" by Sharanya Manivannan

POEM by Sharanya Manivannan Sometimes I think you would have to be absolutely androgynous to not want to make love to me. The most annoying part of being a sexy thing is when you go through a whole day with nobody seeming to want to ravish you. Mythology should make love to me, musical notes should make love to me, hell, strawberry jam should make love to me. Thunderstorms should make love to me. They're the most erotic things in nature and I think they might enjoy it. Kiki Dimoula's captive statue should make love to me. But then I'd just end up calling her a frigid cow. There can be nothing spectacular about a stone tongue in my ear. Magenta should make love to me. If white gets jealous, she could make love to me too. Maps should make love to me. Maps are masculine so I can't be accused of oppressive matriarchy by denying them their fundamental right to pleasure me. Anyway, sometimes I think maybe I don't love you, I only love the way it feels to think I love you, so maybe that feeling should make love to me. And ever since I decided that I love mouths, their shapes and the shapes they make, I think that people's voices should make love to me. So should the city of Rio de Janeiro. And the Yangtze river and each of her tributaries. Hearts should make love to me because I'm already broken. The colour of the sky at 1a.m. on a cloudless night should make love to me. The word Melancholy should make love to me. Sometimes I think that woman in the mirror must be insane to not want to jump me every time I approach or walk past her. Sometimes I think I want to become a born-again, so all my appeal becomes concentrated on the fact that I'm completely unattainable. Sometimes I think I am, otherwise magenta and Rio and Kiki and her statue would certainly have attempted a shag by now, and I wouldn't have the time to wonder why you haven't.

© 2008 Sharanya Manivannan

Creative process: It’s not really bragging or exaggerating to say that “Poem” is probably my most popular piece of writing – when something gets spoofed, as this piece has been, it’s got to be because it is recognizable enough. It’s a piece I love to perform, because it’s funny and sexy and over-the-top, and it cuts through to the audience very quickly and unabashedly. I can’t remember it ever not working in performance, even in places like Singapore (no offense – I love Singapore, but your audiences are so damn sober!). I wrote “Poem” when I was 17, and I think the unimaginative title was a combination of not being able to come up with anything that was right (“Sensual Frustration” was suggested once, I remember, and it was also published somewhere without authorization under that title, to my horror when I found out) and reading a book in which many of the poems were called, well, “Poem”. Also, I wanted to experiment with the prose-poem form. There’s a reference to “Kiki Dimoula’s captive statue”. Dimoula is a Greek poet, and I had read one of her works about a statue of a woman with bound hands, because the woman is always a captive. At this time, I was heavily influenced by micro-press feminist publishing, and read mostly obscure work – if it was dead, white and male, I rarely went near it. I read voraciously back then – when others my age sneaked boys into the house, I sneaked books in. Seriously. I come from a deeply unsupportive family who believed that money spent on books was money wasted. The truth is that I wrote “Poem” because I wanted to write something funny and clever, and because there was a poetry workshop on the following day and I wanted some new material. It sparked with an idea I thought would be a lot of fun – everything on Earth finding me so damn irresistible – and then it was just a matter of deciding what some of those things were. It was definitely a lot of fun to write, and I did it very quickly, but the twist at the end surprised me. For all its quirkiness, to me, “Poem” has always been a poem about loneliness. In many ways it was prescient. The truth is that while I knew all about being irresistible at 17, I didn’t know much at all about rejection of a certain sort. I did eventually experience that kind of rejection, which was what “How To Eat A Wolf” came out of. “How To Eat A Wolf” is often taken quite literally as a man-eater poem. But to me, the wolf has always been her own lust. It is a beast and a wild thing, and she needs to kill it, because the man she needs will not have her that way. But she can’t do it herself, because she loves that lusty part of her and knows that it is only because of him that it needs to die, so that they can be equals. I am sometimes surprised by how the sadness of both these poems is frequently overlooked.

Sharanya Manivannan is an Indian writer who lived in Malaysia for a long time, and became infamous for leaving it. As a spoken word artist, she has performed at dozens of venues since 2001, including an abandoned pier, a cemetery and the 11th century Borobudur Temple (as well as more conventional locations). Her first full-length book of poems, Witchcraft, will be out this year, and lots more by and about her is at http://sharanyamanivannan.wordpress.com.

"Summer Storms the Flowering Fennel" by Pey Pey Oh

Summer Storms the Flowering Fennel by Pey Pey Oh

Tall green many-fingered Mother Goddess, With your delicate gecko hands lifted in Supplication to the sun and wind, Open and feeling each tumbling ray and tearing breath, Even as it roars up the hill, Bending you in submission, Nothing to gainsay it, Nothing in its way, No rock or pylon or tower, The view is clear all the way to the river. In this louring light, you glow– Unearthly gold and bronze, a martian tinge, The strength of your hollow stem whips tensile. Fronds feather each blast and Breathe it through your frame. No wonder the fire of gods Came to us in your womb, Smuggled to us in the night; Nothing can extinguish your grace. Let me learn it, this suppleness, Give me your queenly strength And patience with the world's denizens,

Let me wear each raindrop, Like diamonds in your umbrel crown.

© 2008 Pey Pey Oh

Creative process: I have to take a run up to it and spend a few days talking, reading and writing poetry, as I'm usually out of my head trying to organise family life. So today I was just dreaming and watching the Fennel wave at me outside in the stormy weather, and I got into a trancy state; and I wanted to be this rather majestic plant. And so. I'm afraid I don't plan it much. I might sit on it a bit before I take it out to see if it needs an edit. Oh, and I read a lot, that's crucial to my creative process. Sometimes I use words I didn't know I knew, but I obviously read it somewhere. Pey has been published in various small magazines along the way, like the ones universities publish, or Magma. Mainly she has a problem sending out things by snail mail, so if she can't hand it to you or send you an email, she's in trouble. She likes plants a lot, especially if they're aromatic, but she's really bad at watering them. Good thing it rains a lot in UK where she lives. She likes coming and hanging out with the Malaysian Poets once a year when she visits home, and loves to read at Readings. Plus, she also likes to go eating with the Food Bloggers, that's her other best activity which makes her feel more Malaysian. One of her ambitions is that she'd like to be "Awae wi' tha faeries" - and that's with a Scots accent - but mostly she's a lazy cat that needs a kicking by her friends to send out stuff. So, she thanks everyone.

2 poems by Liyana Y

© 2008 Liyana Y

Creative Process: I was urged by Jacob Sam-la Rose to write a poem on the theme of How To Be ___, which was any inanimate object, and to see it in a different light. I chose the bed, because I miss my bed, and at the time I wrote this I barely got to spend enough time with it, so the distant romanticism was there. It's always a challenge to humanize something inanimate you take for granted, and see how it applies not only to you but to everyone who sees their own version of those objects every day. I wrote this on the fly over a chat with a friend, and in response to the theme proposed by Jacob. It's one of the few poems that I didn't feel like editing and redrafting to death afterwards. -----------------

you are on the edge at last by Liyana Y

Never again. For years you launched your imperfections. Your rage battered me, a bloody mess of beauty broken. I looked up marriage in the dictionary, fuelled by what I recall of childhood, where I played future with friends now possibly dead, happy, or both. There are no synonyms here. There are dogs with better lives. Bitches like fruit trees; bearing kids who ripen to perfection, wrapped in birth. Do you know what happened when you left me on the floor? I was wrapped in birth. My baby left me the gift of heat, and hope. Never again.

How infuriated you are now, flaring at your failure to erase my calm with clumsy flesh. When you turn away I turn a blazing white. Your rage may have reduced me to pulp, but combined with mine? It is almost holy. I have healed, lover, my wings have grown, now all that is left is for me to fly.

© 2008 Liyana Y

Creative Process: Sometime ago, my friend painted this, and asked his readers for their impressions. I felt compelled to write a poem about it, after staring at the image for awhile. My first questions were: Why is the man darkly shaded? why is he standing in a sea of red? Is that woman/angel hiding from him? Is he looking for her? I imagined then that the man was some sort of monster, a brutal man, in a sea of blood, and the woman/angel probably had no intention of revealing herself to him, even though he looked like he was searching for her. Several drafts later I shaped a story of a woman who had survived a miscarriage at the hands of her abusive husband, and how she emerged stronger, almost holier after it. When I showed the poem to my friend (a prose poem first draft at the time) I think he was rather taken aback by my interpretation, which I felt sorry about. And so, I will (probably) never write poems about his paintings again. (Can't promise anything, Reza, sorry). Liyana Y is a poet, scientist, student, part time private English tutor, and eats up any freelance jobs she can to get by every month in the city. She's been writing publicly since 2003, has been published in an anthology by MPH, and a collection of poetry by British Council. She's had the privilege of sharing the stage with brilliant poets from here and overseas, as well as performing at the Singapore Writers Festival. She loves taking photos and blowing in the faces of her cats. Above all, she loves to read and write. She loves loves loves to write.

2 poems by Maslina Arshad

Talking colours by Maslina Arshad

i am grey, you are blue? will you go red or turn green? can we be orange, might we lose violet? get black, be brown, remember yellow? all white now © 2008 Maslina Arshad

Creative process: I was just thinking about how we describe feelings using colours, and from that point I started to play around with the words for them, making the colours more prominent and not as mere background. -------------------

HOROSCOPE by Maslina Arshad

if i have lost you would it make any difference when my horoscope today said otherwise © 2008 Maslina Arshad

Creative process: I know many of us like to read horoscopes and would compare their predictions to actual events of our lives for that day. For this I prefer to write a short poem because simple words can represent stronger feelings better. Maslina Arshad is a closet poet who is also a lawyer by day. She loves reading and is especially blessed to have married a fellow bookworm. She loves watching the rain fall, staring into space for ideas to form into words. She has been writing since many moons ago but never submitted anything to anywhere, until the existence of this webzine. She would love to publish the rest of her work someday. In the meantime she is happy chasing her son chasing the cat, somewhere in the middle of a town called Temerloh. Visit her blog, http://justenar.blogspot.com, to see more of her work.

Short fiction from Damyanti Ghosh Results of some prose exercises:

The Summer Storm Robert's wife has no idea when the light blue sky has turned a threatening, sombre gray-black. As if someone has gone and smeared a lot of chimney-soot on its face, she says to herself, her hand automatically reaching up to touch her own. Laying there on the grass with the sooty sky bearing down on her, she thinks of Robert. She thinks of his arms as he had held her last summer in this very meadow, how they'd made love, laughed, fed each other from the small basket she'd brought along, the mingling smells of a thousand honeysuckles around them. She has gone back in time, dreaming, when a movement catches her eye: a foal at the water's edge, drinking from the small brook, all by itself. She wonders where its mother is. She decides it is probably time she returns home, to the empty house Robert has left her in, to follow that harlot he'd met at the fair: the doctor's daughter, fair-haired, light-skinned, tall, and slim - everything Martha is not. Martha has become Poor Martha, Poor dear Martha. Martha, the wronged, abandoned wife. Every eye in the village has touched her with silent but heavy sympathy as she's trudged her fat belly on swollen legs to and from the market, to fetch milk, or to order new clothes when the old ones did not fit any more. Anything, dear God, but pity. Anything, but another "Poor dear". Martha, her jaw clenched, thinks of how well she has put a stop to all that today. She gets up, brushes off the grass from her dress. As she walks over to the brook, the foal skitters away, neighing. She takes one last look at the bundle under the stone. A big, fat raindrop falls on her arm just then, but she takes no notice. They will find it soon enough, she thinks, as she looks at the bits of cloth flowing out from under the smooth stone she's chosen. Mrs. Brown will recognize the mittens and the cap for

"Martha's poor baby." Mrs. Kilshaw would see the old baby quilt she handed down for the "poor fatherless child." What a waste, really. But the proud father is returning today and the house would be empty no more. He will ask for his son, she is sure, before he asks for forgiveness. Better walk down to the village then, it is almost time he is here. She can always send someone back to fetch his darling blue-white son from the brook. The storm gathers and begins to blow in earnest, the rain soaking Martha so she looks as if she has never been dry. On her hair and clothes and skin the rain flows in rivulets, making it seem like she is crying from all the parts of her body but her eyes. She hums under her breath, and walks like a woman on a stroll in the meadows, taking in the smells of summer. ----------------------------------------------------------------------

Anna's Day Anna is tired, so for dinner she throws together some pasta, loving its white body, its rough-smooth texture. She slurps in a strand, checking if it is al dente, burning her tongue. She thinks of the things she did today, the uniforms, the scrubbing rooms, the conversations. She sets the pasta to drain and stirs up the sauce, the red tomatoes reminding her of the blotches on the white towels as the little girl bled on her table. Anna's table. The girl bled, bled, bled, making the nurses scurry here and scurry there, looking for clips, more towels. But Anna had cut into the wrong place, a main artery, so near the heart that it would pump blood, keep pumping it out, unaware of the blood spilled. Anna makes herself turn to the pasta, now drained, white, but no longer inviting, the spaghetti strands flowing like bloodless veins. They have gelled into a gooey mess, sticky-gooey, and the pale white looks too much like the white girl's white face, and the whiteness of her father as colour drained out of him. Anna mixes the sauce into the pasta, stirring it slowly, willing it back to life, then gives up. She picks up the whole lot, chucks it into the bin. She switches off the kitchen light, which has begun to give her a headache, and walks out towards the patio to have a drink. © 2008 Damyanti Ghosh --------------------------------------------------------------------

Creative process: These were the result of writing exercises given out by Sharon Bakar. In both of these, the first sentence comes from a series of writing prompts. This sentence then becomes the first line of your piece. For instance, for Anna's Day, the prompts were: A feeling: Tired A colour: White A food: Pasta A sound: Honk A texture: Rough Something you've said or thought today: Have a nice vacation An object you've handled: Cell phone The name of a person you know or have known: Anna I was then asked to write a sentence using as many of the words as possible, with a minimum of three. This was my sentence: Anna is tired, so for dinner she throws together some pasta, loving its white body, its rough-smooth texture. I guess my brain kind of short-circuited a bit, trying to connect disparate things. The prompt words used for The Summer Storm story were: wife, light blue, sombre. I basically got the stories down in speed-writing bursts of ten minutes each, and then polished and cut out the excess.

Damyanti Ghosh is an established freelance writer, writing for various websites and magazines, who is now trying to figure out a way to step into fiction: a field she has touched before, but never professionally. She has written poetry for quite some time now, and hopes to become a writer some day: not just a published author, but a real writer in the truest sense of the word.

"Gaze" by Leon Wing (with Audio)

Gaze By Leon Wing From my window, opened, A scow across the sploshing road, My gaze cruises my gate, ajar, Towards the neighbours, locked Behind their door, shuttered. His fife strident, The old man could have had shunted The ring into her digit, Binding the woman into Matrimonial damnation. The wife’s gaze loses my gate, afar. The old man roots behind her, Scowling, eavesdropping for any splashing By the minnow, trapped In her glass tank, In the terrible terrace.

August 21, 2008 © Leon Wing 2008

Creative process: This poem begins with someone gazing from her window, at the neighbours behind their window, the wife gazing back. While “my gate” is “ajar”, their “door” is “shuttered”, closed. They are “locked” behind it. “a scow across the sploshing road” qualifies the looker’s gaze. A scow is some kind of flat-bottomed boat or barge for carrying goods. “sploshing” suggests the ocean or the sea, a very long way across it, a wide divide. This implies a widely differing circumstance between the looker and the lookee: one is unfettered, free; the other bound into a marriage she cannot escape from. A fife is a kind of flute which accompanies drums in a marching band. However, this fife is harshsounding, when played in their wedding, where the husband forced, not slipped, the marital ring into the wife’s finger. “digit” reveals how he viewed her finger - and her person - as just a body part or an object. This ring is not merely that but a ring on a chain, to bind her into an eternal hell of a marriage. The first line of the last stanza mirrors the third line of the first stanza, in rhyme and sounds : the AY in the pairs of “gaze” and “gate”, the ER and AH in “ajar” and “afar”, and the OOSES in “cruises” and “loses”. This mirroring evokes a comparison between the looker and the “wife”: one is free; the other is locked, in her house, and in a bad marriage. The wife cannot get away, because her husband has practically planted (“roots”) both of them so deeply into their marriage, neither he nor the wife can climb out of it. “Scowling, eavesdropping for any splashing” compares with “a scow across the sploshing road” in line 2 of stanza one. “Scowling” harks back to “scow” in the first stanza, in sound, for comparision. “scow” describes a calm gaze over a long but not actual distance, and “scowling” indicates an intense and angry emotion. “across” has a similar sound, of O, in “eavesdropping”. And, “splashing” and “sploshing” both have the same halfrhyme, to compare the freedom of the sploshing in the first stanza and the tanked-in splashing of the trapped minnow. “By the minnow, trapped” is similar to “From my window, opened” in line 1 of the first stanza, in construction and sounds. The reader can link “minnow” to “window”, in their similar sounds. The looker’s “window” is opened while the “minnow” is kept inside a tank: contrast “opened” and “trapped”. “trapped” and “tank” have mute consonants, p and k. “trapped”, when enounced, closes the mouth, trapping or stopping the sound. With “tank”, the glottis is stopped or blocked, baulking the sound further. The “minnow” is held captive, like the wife, who has her freedom blocked. The last line, “In the terrible terrace”, closes the poem by repeating the “ter” sound in “terrible terrace”. You sense the terror - the terror - of the woman.

Leon Wing deconstructs poems in Puisi-Poesy, http://puisipoesy.blogspot.com, and has his own blog, http://leonwing.blogspot.com. He edits the poetry section of The Malaysian Poetic Chronicles webzine.