There’s nothing more tender
Than the exhilaration of a white-hot fever,
Recalcitrant in delirium,
Disturbing calm in display.
 
Like the game two queens play
Till blinkered to kings,
Till pawn becomes treasure
And treasure dies away.
 
It is the game that taps quickly to foray
And lays
Waste to regiment, clergy, royalty
As long as queens will try.
 
But it is the rarity of cunning
Charity; an innocent trick,
The consensual gambit
That percolates routine,
And have...

CHARACTERS

In 2015,

WOMAN, 42, looking somewhat older, black hair almost always in a bun.
YOUNG GIRL, 15, lean and with the same black hair.
OLD LADY, 71, pleasantly plump, hair mostly silvered.

The scene is the living room of a flat in an HDB building¹.



SCENE I

A soft, yellow light fades into the scene, illuminating a round dining table. A ceiling fan begins to spin slowly. There is only a quiet whirring audible. The year...

Sun hats, broad-brimmed and languorous, dip their tips into the sensual redness of the late-evening Sun; another day’s meretricious acts forgiven; as they return to the comfort of homey racks, and anticipate another garrulous litany of tomorrows. The loftiest clock, with one ponderous clack, has casted a penumbra over the eighteenth hour, and yet, a certain young lady remains entrapped within the nook of a lanky street, half-heartedly engaged in tiffin, and small talk.
 
Resting an arm on the...

“He says that life is round, that we’re stuck on this wheel of living and dying; an endless circle, until someone breaks it. You walked in here, you ruptured the pattern-----bang-----the whole world gets wider.” - Lucien Carr from Kill Your Darlings (2013)

and so it seems, the scientists
witnessed in graphite sheen, dull
chalk, the perfect length
of a crucible
perfect penciled circles

circumference of the not-yet-defined, the
undefined
held by tension-smitten
strings, pulling
a mass of metal things
...

A subtlety, when noticed, is never too hard to
un-notice. Nothing like a dense summer,
collective sweat sheen, that brief vapour
all condensed into the scene.
Then, the soft prick;
frayed fabric hook with its sharp licks so
sporadic, so consistent.
A fleeting litany.

Many subtleties, when noticed, are never too hard to
un-notice. See, the thread caught on my sleeve,
scraping my skin, tickled to an anxious itch;
all inconsequential lint.
It is the sweat on a...

Sun hats, broad-brimmed and languorous, dip their tips into the sensual redness of the late-evening Sun; another day’s meretricious acts forgiven; as they return to the comfort of homey racks, and anticipate another garrulous litany of tomorrows. The loftiest clock, with one ponderous clack, has casted a penumbra over the eighteenth hour, and yet, a certain young lady remains entrapped within the nook of a lanky street, half-heartedly engaged in tiffin, and small talk.
 
Resting an arm on the...