I was commissioned by the Straits Times and Singapore’s National Arts Council to write a poem, “On the other side” about the pandemic and what’s been going on. My piece came out today here It is also narrated as part of the “When all this is over” podcast also by Read more…
Twenty Poems to Round Out the Year by Judith Huang The white wings beyond the cracks for Nii Addo The white wings beyond the cracks In the world’s pearl Like a shell that cups The bloodrush of the ear Is making us into the beating Heart outside air And you Read more…
MOONING When will the moon shine like this again? I lift my wine cup, questioning the heavens. Who knows – in the palace of the sky, time is kept, and told differently… I want to glide back home on the wind, but the high jade turrets, the cold’s fierce clutch Read more…
Lovesong for a Calligrapher there is a boy, his fist a clump of lotus stalks gathered, and – an impulse – dipped in ink. I imagine the pond, sudden, stir – clear beads shaken, the water runs to ink the lotus buds to brush a tentative stroke and then another, Read more…
Second Letter to Mama Dear Mama, you are standing by the stove and I am standing on the chair by the stove as the rice rises warmly in the clay pot the soy sauce stains it a chestnut brown shiny as enamel with oil. And the rain outside and the Read more…
Three of my poems on the theme of mental health and the goodness of support from friends and family during trying times of mental illness were published in COG, the Cogswell College publication, here. Check them out. I’m especially happy to address these issues in my poetry because it sheds Read more…
I had a lot of fun translating Chinese poet Xiao Shui’s wonderful little vignettes – they are a kind of short prosepoem, almost flash fiction like. And they just got picked up by the Los Angeles Review of Books! I’m so happy to see them up here. Click this link Read more…
By morning the lanterns hung sobbing, their colours puddling like dew in the carpet grass, the fresh breeze rattled their wood. One or two had burnt up, left metal racks behind. The frangipani lifts its face to the bluegrey dawn and remembers the night of the autumn moon, its branches Read more…
The big sky laps the wooden planks, string bean poles hold nothing but themselves, sticking out like a ratted wall on both sides, it and its reflection. The sea is something spiritual to me, said the round woman, on the dark-sand beach. The dog we watch with a wary eye Read more…
I can imagine the look on her face now filled with fright as something clutches her from somewhere out of nowhere, catching in her throat, just as you enter her, the look on your face printed in her eye. In there, in that eye, you will see my face, my Read more…