pair of blue overalls,
half-strap firearm, pinky
fingers tangle messy.
two children and one boston
baseball cap; twice we
call out, ke yi wei ma,
hands stretched upwards
lilt backwards arching half-
creole mouth-shapes, the
familiar contoured into a
question mark. speak
English, papa says,
pull up your socks.
together we press soiled grass – green, brown –
in smooth hands, textured
nibbles grazing nascent
offerings. mama scoops
didi up, offers him like
a burnt sacrifice to who will
feed on his outstretched palms.
the sunset soon.
quietly we come and quietly
we will go. the next day I read the word ‘evanescent’ in a novel, mispronounce it, learn to roll the ‘s’ and ‘c’ together, in one quick breath.
Photo: Ahmad Iskandar (2016)
Poet Bio
Home?
Family, Friends.
What is home to you?
Familiarity in the midst of dislocation and vice versa; also, chilli padi.
Christian Yeo is a final-year Singaporean law undergraduate at the University of Cambridge. His work has been published in Quarterly Literary Review Singapore, Ethos Books' This is not a safety barrier, the Eunoia Review, the jfa human rights journal, 6'98's Redefinitions, Notes, and ZETEO Magazine, among others; his poetry is forthcoming in [Insert] Zine and also won the Arthur Sale Poetry Prize in 2019.