Song of a Reformed Headhunter

Serendipity, to have two of my "Palinodes in the Voice of My Dead Father" appear in Flypaper Lit , which calls Ohio home, when I'm here in Ohio for Elnora's memorial service. GH and I have lost three parents between us in the last three years. The palinodes give voice to the tension between mourners, as in every family, and then the possibility of reconciliation. Five of the palinodes also appeared in PN Review 255 . 

Palinode XXVI There are mysteries here that cannot be described except by retraction. The earth does not revolve around the sun. The son does not revolve around the father. Image: Galileo Galilei at his trial by the Inquisition in Rome in 1633. Galileo pushes away the Bible.  https://www.pinterest.at/pin/371265563023128932/

Weekly column written for the Singapore Unbound newsletter. Sign up here . Of the many social faultlines exposed and deepened by the current crisis, race stands out for its power to attract blame. The US is seeing a spate of hate crimes against Asian Americans , encouraged by a blame-China campaign by Trump and his allies. Singapore, which has long shunted its South Asian migrant workers into crowded dormitories, is caught unprepared for a surge in coronavirus infection among this vulnerable population. Actions taken to address this surge have been slow and confusing, even dangerous. A migrant rights advocacy group discovered that a group of migrant workers were locked up in their room by their dormitory operator. This is horrifying but not surprising, given the country's racialized fear of an exploited and silenced population.  In her book Playing in the Dark: Whiteness and the Literary Imagination , Toni Morrison argues that the American ideal of freedom is not formed by the...

Palinode XXV Every man in my family loved to sing in a voice unhoused and homely. Every man in my family loved to dance the Hippy Hippy Shake with his spouse  as if meeting for the first time at a tea dance in the Golden Venus, where no tea was served but plenty of spirits. That you danced away the nights after moving to New York from Singapore and found the songs of the golden goddess shaking out page after page after page made you a man in my family, in my book.  Image credit: https://fontsinuse.com/uses/7587/hippy-hippy-shake-the-swinging-blue-jeans

Palinode XXIV The rat that leapt off my back to enter heaven first is still a rat. I am an ox, stoic and traditional, keeping to the rich furrows cut by abiding love. It’s true: when I was ten I wished I were a monkey, overturning heaven with my antics, changing into a fish, a freckled bustard, a roadside shrine. But mother died and went ahead of me and all wishes for change left too. If I should turn into a rooster or a pig, how would she recognize her boy when she passed by the rocky fields? Or, now, these regions of fire? Image credit: https://www.epicentrofestival.com/

Palinode XXIII Inside the heavy canvas bag,  all greasy, sealed with motor oil, my handy pliers, flat nose, round nose, and needle, my screwdrivers of many lengths and heads, my ball peen hammer, the use of you never learned, except the measuring tape I caught you once bandaging round your biceps and then your unconcealed thighs.

Palinode XXII If I had  such a strong sense of direction in life, why can’t I now find my way out of this maze, but feed each day-night on seven youths of regret and seven maids of grief?  A marbled sculpture of the Minotaur | Courtesy of pinterest.com

Palinode XXI When Stesichorus, he who fathers a chorus, retracted his blame  on Helen for Troy’s devastation, he recovers his eyesight. He could appreciate beauty again. Each time I retract a statement I made in life, I recover my voice. That’s how much you want the dead to speak to you again and again but only to contradict their death, in other words, themselves.

Palinode XVII (Revised) I met my four brothers the other day, the two older ones, the two younger, all whom father loved more than he loved me, gave them better jobs and lives, which taught them lordly bearings, still galloping straight to the races on Saturdays and Saturdays, their hands clutching the racing form, their shining hooves stirring up a stampede of dust in my mouth.

Palinode XX Our last dinner at the burger joint with the bikers theme, eating not with disciples on the road, I did not have any, but with my family, reassembled from the winds, you and your worldly American, your sister, her husband, and her two sweethearts, your mother sagging and smiling, brought me unspeakable happiness until the waiter, leather-clad, dark glasses, who had been staying out of sight diplomatically, asking us just once how we enjoyed his recommendations, saw that we were done and brought us the bill.  Image credit: still from film by SG Road Vigilante

Palinode XIX If you can’t tell by their gasping, go closer, but not too close, and read the red lines printed by the masks, ventilation or surgical, across the isolated zone of their wheezing.  

Palinode XVIII Nights I could not breathe and took to standing by the kitchen window. No stars in the city, but the dull crash of a rubbish bin and cats screeching. Image credit: HDB flats in Yishun on 08 Mar 2013. Housing. Photo by OOI BOON KEONG. Read more at https://www.todayonline.com/singapore/hdb-flat-owners-mri

Palinode XVII I met my brother the other day, still galloping to the races on Saturdays and Saturdays, his hands clutching the racing form, his shining hooves stirring up a stampede of dust in my mouth. Image credit: Singapore Turf Club

Palinode XVI We thought we had forgiven him, our father who abandoned us for another family, but everyone, without exception, arrives here with thoughts worse than murderous. We will make him empty the sea with a teaspoon, or run 1000 km in circles small as a pinhead, or pin his dick in a nest of fire ants. I can’t decide what’s most fitting for the man. You are the poet, descendant of Dante and ancient hellish Chinese imaginings. What do you recommend?   Gustave Doré's depiction of Minos judging sinners at the start of Canto V of Dante's Inferno

Palinode XV The bicycle wheels that fetched you home from pianica practice, your legs hanging off the side. The wheel of fortune on TV  and in the TOTO stand. The ten-cent ride on the Ferris wheel in Beauty World, always threatened by fire. The car that never would have materialized if your sister had not dated a driver with reliable wheels. The wheeling years when my lungs collapsed and I dragged them  in and out of hospitals like a dead parachute. The wheel of rebirth we no longer bet on, though once we did, the working poor, so rich with hope we wished life goes round. Image credit: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nKidrGuyhSM

Palinode XIV An electric wheelchair would have given back my legs but your mom spoke against your idea. She was afraid I would voyage beyond her care, meet Calypso of the flower shop, drown between Scylla of the stairs and Charybdis of the cant of people’s talk, be picked off by Polyphemus driving a lorry of livestock. So as not to make her life more difficult, and it was, and it was, I turned down your electrifying offer and took the name of nobody.  Image credit: https://seniorcare.com.sg/guide-power-electric-wheelchair/

Palinode XIII At the cinema you were excited by the bare-bodied students of kungfu lifting water buckets on their broad shoulders, the Hollywood car chase led by an amnesiac Marine captain at the flashing wheel, and so was I, looking for a shot of testosterone in my disabled life, until the picture of you taken from behind came unbidden on the screen, and I had to close my eyes against the fire engulfing the overturned  car, the water buckets clattering down the temple steps.  Image credit: https://www.shifuyanlei.co.uk/blogs/news/127207491-3-ways-to-train-like-a-shaolin-monk

Palinode XII I couldn’t believe my ashes were lowered by a ribbon into the sea in a gift box. Not a chance to stay on anyone’s fingers. Not a chance to fly with the wind and whip back into anyone’s eyes. Singapore does not take, nor give, chances. You dropped me off the dedicated boat to the sea bed, where I lay unopened, where I dissolved.

Palinode XI Live and let live, I said to my fishes in the tank when your mom complained about church leaders. Live and let live, I said to my potted plants in the common corridor when your sister refused to speak to her aunt after that trip to Australia. One by one, the guppies and the barbs and the killifish turned on their side and floated up. Out on the corridor, my chilli plant lost its fiery interest to live.  Credit:Straits Times, August 3, 2017

Palinode X You must understand no one is tortured here unwillingly. The man who abandoned his parents at their hour of need climbs up the grinding stone with wailing abandonment. The corporate raider, for his greed, throws up his hands for the handcuffs and screeches joyfully as he is whipped. And dashing for the cliff-edge the double agent flings her beautiful body over a field of knives. They are all literalists, sensualists of a stripe, artists. The weeping and gnashing of teeth in the outermost darkness, those retractions are the poets. The above palinode is a retraction of t his ode (Part 7) .