by Gwee Li Sui
Whether every single writer has wanted art to be analysed is beside the point. Artistic practice already joins them all as the interface with which each confronts reality. My loose structure for their confrontations has three parts: we begin with the general and then enter national realities before developing into simple, concrete experiences. By ending with seeming trivialities of, once again, private lives, the book echoes the narrative of the first volume and returns the truth of selves-made history to the anthology’s celebration of national maturation.
artbarrage
BY BANI HAYKAL
knock, knock, knock, keep knocking, the door, knock, keep knocking, knocking, knocking, knock, keep knocking, knocking, knock, knocking, keep fists shelved against that door, pounding, fists, as gently as, keep, knocking, pounding, fists, door, door, fists, knock, keep knocking, knock it, knock it till fists bleed knocking, keep pounding, pounding, slam those fists, harder, faster, knock harder, or ring the door bell since that’s more pleasant in the morning. and if they don’t come to the door, send another email. because, where else, then, how else, where, how, when and how, how now, where and now what, when is it and how else then are we going, how then, man how else, how and where else man, man, man, how man, how else man are we going to make art? i don’t want to be famous, famous? no, i don’t want it, i don’t want to be famous, famous? no man, i don’t need, i don’t need fame, but money, money man, money money money, money la sia, money man, i need it, i need it, it, it, money, it, i need it, money, it, man, it, i need it and if i become famous along the way… famous man, famous like American Idol famous, famous like Mustafa famous, famous macam Fandi Ahmad famous, macam Lee Kuan Yew famous, macam macam-macam famous because all famous people got money, money, they have money, so like them, them, them, like them, just like them, money them, famous them, i want to be, like them, them man, famous and fortunate, fame and fortune, like them, so yes, i want to be famous, famous and rich, like money, i want money, i want to be money, be famous, so famous, so much money so i can make art. so take, this, what, hollow, as i, it, resonator is, take i, this confluence of nothingness, how then, where to, is then, what is, next is, i, taken, breathing, breathless, chest pressed, machines, pipelines, ships from unseen horizons, slabs of bodies, us all, we, without mercy, malice, the guillotine severs, pounding lows, subs, fill, resonate, the friends of Mussolini, it ruptures, these, vessels, tremble, lungs refusing, they, swallow shoved, postures unravel, rebel, compelling stories of the future of fucking, fucking with, fucking on, fucking against, we, us, marooned and combusting, fucking fucked, take i, this confluence of nothingness, where to, take, this, and this, and this, strewn across till the floor, it, everywhere, it looks it, sun dried tomatoes. but it then begins with these fists, choking, squashing, relentless embrace for the unknown, screeches more welcoming, less immediate, than the melody of your shit, resolved and pasteurised, commodity lite, bite, this, is, this, and only, this is, the happiest inhabitant of hell. there is a hollowness, centre, smacked, there, in, right towards the light, it shadows, amidst puzzles and pillows, contagious like fuck, screens upon screens, screeching, humming incessantly, there, without pause, a reason to unfold. take i, this, what hollow, that resonates the shit of your promise. for the money, money man, for it, for the money man, take me, us, shit, in fact, yes, tons, of us, us, we shall, tons, do your dirty work, yours on us, us pawns, we talk about culture, educate them, install culture in their brains, for you, from us, no problem, and so take me, us, we, there are, tons tons, there, out there, tons of, there, here, neighbours, friends, family, family friends, colleague, tons, there, these, are, these, contemporary shamans of our lives, hack, they, hack, are, these, they are, do not, look, not, to them, do not, look to, these, convoluting, they, them, onto you, they are, don’t let them, don’t do that, stop, wave the tablet of prosperity, eh sialah, they say, work hard, harder, hard work, play it, play the game, roll the dice, sialah, kalah lagi, macam, sialah, tons of them, tons tons tons tons, contemporary shamans, clerics of righteousness, imams of truths, priests of materialistic honour, gurus of the universe, bulldozing your last ounce of sanity, we sell, culture, sell culture, by the seashore, tiga sepuloh ringgit, there it goes, there it goes, there it goes, there it goes, there it goes, there it goes, out the window, there, out there, yours, flattened, thrown, because you let them. it’s a dead end, that’s a dead end, at a dead end, you’re at a dead end, the dead end, the end, dead, you, dead, you are dead, end, the end, is death, dying, i am, are we, dead, dying is, here, that is, death, go away, death is, here, dying, again, dead ends to no end, die, die die, noooooooooooooooooooo, another dead end, no, dead ends again, these ends, deadening as ends, dead ends, they are, were then, were created by choice, not by accident, not by, by, here, it ends, like pawns, who, us, to them, why then, headlong, sent to the gutter, closed in, dead, again, again, again, again, again, again, again, no end to dead ends if we keep jumping through hoops they have set to our graves.
Alms for A Pair
BY JASON WEE
(Parts)
Think of an older body covering
A young lighter body.
Think of that body above waking up
Slightly startled at the sight
Of having slept with one’s long lost self,
The bed a time machine
Bringing one back to another dark room,
When one touches a stranger
For the solace usually found alone.
Think of the body below
Stirring, brushing its hands on bits and parts,
A pit of coarse hair, elbows,
Ribs, returning to slumber, satisfied
With the evidence of flesh
Careworn and starved, knowing the shape of
A self so disappointed
Proves its power to unmake experience,
To ignore pain as it stands
For another year, hour, another song
Slowed down. The older hums, stops.
When the body below wakes, will it know
Those eyes it looks in on, or
Was nothing grasped, will it ask to be known
Naked and seized for first time?
(A Building Tests Its Walls)
An upper third molar grows towards my eye
in order to eat the light through its window.
The pebbles under my scapula
gnash its fibrous nest, sparking a fire,
burning like the ripped cables
in both decks of my pelvis.
If I rattle these glass walls for air
the smoke may be confused for structure –
already my medial arch collapsed
under the piles of its changing city –
yet, with nothing done, is this ruin
ever not a caprice? I wish for no more
before the glass, my body steadying itself
with sogged mulch for masonry,
hand crossing scalp, ripping
the hinges off each enclosure.
Sputum seeps and greets the humid air.
The stones inch out of their cavities.
(Time Machine)
An edgeless box with no buttons,
cool in your hands,
responds to electric memories.
Remember a fresh regret
and it hums to work –
the sun sets in the west,
lost keys back in pockets,
candles mourn no carelessness,
hair leap like salmon
off the shower floor
upstream to scalps.
Reach any beginning. We both know,
groundhog, winter has only begun.
Molted shells slide back to flesh,
are we hearing the cracks again
or for the first time?
Bodies soar from hospital beds.
no ache too faint to leave unchanged,
the night bite, the slow arsenic,
the steel present dragging chains
of older words, forgotten pictures.
here’s your chance
when the Oracle slips out of Smith,
Everything with a beginning…
Chris Reeves reverses
the earth’s spin,
zips done up,
wine turns into water,
virgins again,
…has an end?
Light, and dark and light again,
soon even you are gone.
Fish crawl down the shore,
the world moves as if
hummingbird winged,
the law of every known thing
staying known as the edge
of knowing anything at all
pulls ever closer. Past that,
our energies previously spent
pulled tightly back into the first
or another way of saying
metaphor disappears
when all things touch.
My hand tightly on yours,
that thought astringent as
the bitter skin of walnut…
Everything
(The Older to the Younger)
One day they will tell you of
the necessity for sobriety
and writing things down
Together with the secret
pains caused, inside you, unseen,
by sugars and other vices,
plain bread over buttered
and paying timely taxes will,
for different reasons, save you much face,
Though the talk of habits belies
an echo, quieter than regret,
of words caught from strangers, parents,
lost loves, those
who never meant much but do,
words like stones
pulled from icy waters, spun
in stiffened palms to test
its form and flung away,
the hour soon filled with
faltering skips
that expires after the third,
if lucky, fourth beat,
however smooth the raw rock felt.
So they continue,
despite you knowing the day
won’t always end in sunsets
but in lightless spells
and apologies passed along
only deepen the bruises,
wishing to talk to you
of the way patience brings roses,
the ways rooms hold together
the lives we held up
as well as choosing remembering
over forgetting, and choosing
reclaiming over that,
but they don’t.
Nice though, the way
spring follows winter, always.
(Skin Tags)
the one by your right eye
is the split tip of a dropped pencil
beneath the pale of your arm
seven dropped pins on a streetless map
while in the forest by your hip
a white truffle
each a sign on the legend
one tells the distance
to the past from here, five years
another, direction
the white tuber, caution, it says
pause before crossing
I approach in the dark
with my brush, guidebook and pig
to meet a bridge broken by
your wooden phalanx
wouldn’t cross me, I wouldn’t
as you are, I beckon, bent low
(But Each Time I Do)
I convinced myself a song set to repeat
so slightly disregards its first playthrough
for the sake of having you hear, my ear
a needle running that airborne groove
picking up dust and dirt as hiss and tremble
as the black circle turns you know, little fool
each start the fall of a plumb line
deep in the heart the way a rocket rising
from earth appears to arch to those on the ground
a steady left till it tastes its own propulsion
I’d tried so hard not to give in
but the circle doesn’t close with each loop,
time’s signature a horse
with the hind legs landing roughly where
the front legs strike ground –
an accident happens every so often
that makes you forget there ever was
an animal enjoining the two,
we look wide to see the beast under my skin
and forget the legs at all.
(Refrain)
This song is new
you are new –
this song is older than you or me
But those horns laying the intro
before earth
god created brass sections
and the love
we did that
the ones who tell of
wolves cut open
to replace flesh with stones
we the ones
who eat the child that says goodbye
while they chorus
a New Year
damning the false starts
the graceless weight
accusing me in the mirror
of death by
a thousand squandered hours
Looking away
will be how I deny it
all in all
on the whole, I wish only to say yes.
沿着这条街道走下去
作者：英培安
沿着这条街道走下去，尽管你
见到的都是陌生的钢骨水泥
超级市场、旅店、银行大厦
地铁站；巨型的电子广告在你头顶上
鼓噪如群鸦；走下去，尽管你听到的是
车辆敌意的咀咒，人群纷纷扰扰
疲惫的脸
一如飘过你眼前的落叶
沿着这条街道
走下去，到交叉路口，转左
或者转右，你不再犹豫，因你深信
你已不会犯错。可惜暮色的步伐
急促如觅食的野猫，已显现在你眼皮的皱褶
甚至于你的血液中蔓延
看那年轻的母亲快乐地推着婴儿车越过斑马线
（忘掉你与孩子的争执吧，记住你教过他的儿歌）
是的，沿着这条街道
扶好你巍颤颤的身影走下去
黄昏虽然就快消失如你的激情
与信心，黑夜开始在你耳际喃喃低语
如困扰着你的耳鸣
你看到躺在天边的晚霞吗？
她美得教你心痛，就像你记忆中
温热的唇，梦中的眼神
遥远的泪光
我知道时间是一面无情的刀叶
把你的容颜削得斑驳不堪。她说，她柔声地说
柔声如多年前伴着你走过这条街道的女孩
我知道你举步维艰，步履蹒跚，但我也与你一样
白发苍苍。沿着这条街道走下去吧
你听到她的声音了
固执坚定
如多年前那黑发明眸的女孩
黑夜会骤然到来如剧终时熄灯的
舞台。台上与台下的人都一样会相继离去
忘掉你沿途的愤懑、伤痛、悔恨、疚愧
记住这次旅途，记住
你看过的晨曦，记住
这美丽的晚霞，记住
那场细雨，记住
她的眼神，记住
她的泪光；记住
回家时不要迷路，记住
记住，她温热的
唇
When You Walk Down This Road
BY YENG PWAY NGON
Translated by Jeremy Tiang
when you walk down this road, even if
all you see is unfamiliar reinforced
concrete
supermarkets, hotels, skyscraper banks,
MRT stations, huge electronic billboards overhead
noisy as a flock of crows, keep walking, even if
all you hear are cursing cars, chaotic crowds
exhausted faces
drifting past your eyes like falling leaves
when you walk down
this road, at the junction turn left
or else right, no more doubt, you believe
you cannot make a mistake. Yet twilight footsteps
anxious as food-seeking stray cats show in your eyelid creases
even spread through your blood
see that young mother happily push her stroller across the zebra crossing
(forget the arguments with your own child, remember the songs you taught him)
yes, walk down this road
supporting your shivering shadow
even if twilight will soon vanish like your passion
and faith, night begins to murmur darkly by your ear
like a troubling echo within
do you see the sunset clouds recline against the skyline?
so beautiful it pains your heart like the warm lips
in your memory, the eyes in your dream
the faraway tears
I know time is a pitiless blade
slashing lines across your features. She said, she said as tenderly
as the girl who walked down this road by your side all those years ago
I know walking is hard, your steps unsteady, but I am like you
with stark white hair. So walk down this road
and you’ll hear her voice
stubborn and strong
like the girl all those years ago with black hair and bright eyes
night will arrive suddenly as darkness at the end of a play swamps the
stage. On and off stage alike, people leave quickly
forget your journey’s rage. sorrow, regret, guilt
remember this trip, remember
the dawns you have seen, remember
this beautiful twilight, remember
that light rain, remember
her eyes, remember
her tears, remember