Song of a Reformed Headhunter

The Bagel Door   The man behind the counter had a bad night. He banged the brown paper bag of bagels in front of the customer in front of me. I did not know that bagels could make such a smart tap, as if a building inspector was at the door of my apartment. What could I say to the unsmiling caller? My bathroom faucet was leaky? I had no permits for the double-glazed windows? The fire escape had rusted shut before I moved in? No explanation would satisfy the inspector, not even the two dollars that the customer stuffed into the little metal basket between them before waving a cheerful goodbye, whose authenticity was hard to ascertain.   The Ghost Bus   The bus goes past us, and then stops a full length ahead. An inspector, blue-uniformed, hops off, and the bus takes off. It is not our bus. The next bus stops for us, but also stops a full-length before my bus-stop. There is no reason for it, as the bus lane in front of it is blank, as blank as the white spaces between ...

 Started writing a new series of poems tentatively titled "Inspector Inspector." The Ghost Bus   The bus goes past us, and then stops a full length ahead. An inspector, blue-uniformed, hops off, and the bus takes off. It is not our bus. The next bus stops for us, but also stops a full-length before my bus-stop. There is no reason for it, as the bus lane in front of it is blank, as blank as the white spaces between words. There is no reason for my bus to stop there. I walk down the length of my morning bus, and I walk down the length of the ghost bus, wondering how many ghost people are riding it to a ghost destination that I know nothing of. The lights change just in time for me to cross the road, and I look down the full length of the ghost bus, seeing no one, but my morning driver who is looking, I imagine, back at me. It is the first year of the pandemic.   * SNOW AT 5 PM has a French fan! His review on Amazon , translated from French into E...

 Lovely review of Steep Tea by Tara Safronoff: Steep Tea , Jee Leong Koh’s fifth book of poems, is a marvelous, diverse collection united by the epigraphs that begin each poem: brief quotations of women poets and translators. In this way, Koh’s poems respond to a distinctly female literary voice, usually with admiration and fellowship, but sometimes, as in “Ashtrays as Big as Hubcaps,” with resentment. “Ashtrays” quotes Mary Oliver’s “Singapore,” then masterfully rejects the post-colonial condescension of Oliver’s over-earnest metaphor: “The woman scrubbing the big ashtrays with a blue rag,/she was my mother. Her hands were not moving like a river./Her dark hair was not like the wing of a bird.” Koh’s poems are remarkably aware of the divided attentions of many women writers, of the “daughter shifted on/your hip, when you wrote,” of the study door that “kept its ear open to the crib.” The mothers’ double loyalties to the written word, to domestic demands, echo the poet’s expa...

 Weekly column written for the Singapore Unbound newsletter. Sign up here . The report of Human Rights Watch on Singapore 2020 makes for dismal reading, because the litany of violations of human rights has not changed very much from previous years. In fact, as in the United States, the pandemic has exposed and deepened structural injustices against the poor in Singapore. As the report observes, "While Singapore had initial success in controlling Covid-19 infections in the country, a surge of cases among migrant workers in early April led the government to put all dormitories on lockdown , restricting the movements of almost 300,000 foreign workers. While some “essential” workers were moved, the bulk of the migrants were confined to hot, overcrowded rooms with little ventilation, leaving them at risk of infection. As of August 13, 52,516 dormitory residents had tested positive for the coronavirus , making up more than 90 percent of all reported cases in Singapore."...

  My voice is eternal, according to editor Bbp Hosmillo in his FB announcement. Thanks for featuring my work in your first spotlight feature of QUEER SOUTHEAST ASIA . Three Palinodes in the Voice of My Dead Father: one about my father seeing all Indians as the same Indian in the afterlife; one about my father and WWII; and one about his ball pein hammer and other tools. Download the PDF to read the poems in full.   Tania De Rozario, whose hybrid memoir AND THE WALLS COME CRUMBLING DOWN, was released in the US by Gaudy Boy last September, is featured too. Heartbreaking essay about how her church tried to exorcise her queerness out of her, and the failure of family to protect her from the violation. Particularly poignant is the moment when her grandmother smashed up a beloved painting of The Last Supper because she was told that it was an artifact of idolatry.  

 Weekly column written for the Singapore Unbound newsletter. Sign up here . 4 people died after pro-Trump rioters breached the US Capitol yesterday, watched with horror around the world. Since November Trump and his allies have been attacking the presidential election results in the courts and the media relentlessly. After the Capitol was secured against the insurrection, Congress reconvened late last night to certify the electoral college vote count. Joining the rioters in their treasonous act, 6 GOP senators and 121 GOP House members voted to reject Arizona's result. The sound and the fury can easily create a sense of panic that American democracy is in a crisis. However, the sense of crisis is uncalled for, as professor of journalism and political science Peter Beinart explains . Beinart points out that the Republicans are not doing something new. They're merely giving a new form to an old idea that animated the framing of the Constitution: the idea that "...

Weekly column written for the Singapore Unbound newsletter. Sign up here . To send this dismal year off, we are taking a break from New York to stay for a few days in Mystic, Connecticut. This old shipbuilding and whaling village has many delights to offer, including our rented cottage built in 1770 by one John Denison. Another is the river, whose scale-like appearance when brushed by the wind justifies fully the name of the village. The name "Mystic" is derived from the Pequot term "missi-tuk" describing a large river whose waters are driven into waves by tide or wind, as Wikipedia informs us. The best part of our stay, however, is away from the village, from its historic seaport and shops. Barn Island Wild Life Management Area is a 1,013-acre wildlife conservation site offering hiking, bird watching, fishing, and deer hunting. You emerge out of hardwood forests to see large tracts of tidal marshes that drown in Little Narragansett Bay. The...