every unbroken thing
Christian Yeo
Photograph: Daniel Tan (@shredcow)
we come bearing gifts. not
incense or myrrh or even the
apartment named ‘aloe cassia’
only a box of curry puffs.
(who says what grace sees?)
one-two punch drunk lying on
cardboard beneath the bridge
by Singapore’s complex. slashed
waist bag and friends for good chat;
hair curling upwards like cones,
crawling unto each other, almost
a slow becoming. unleavened, I
knead grudging five-minute-hands
into sheets of batter (unchapped,
unhomed, selah).
where I listen hard enough I hear the
songs of solomon. some child and
the breaking of the body for bread.
when the sun sets you will come
for me; tonight I will have a
hundred men, run criminal astray
and sell myself a conversation.
one fell swoop a sultry backhand
and a giving and taking and giving
again – tomorrow I learn how to
sew, hew backbone ridges into
a crown of liver-spotted thorns.
angsana trees battered by rain.
shoulder to shoulder we stand
in bunker raincoats chanting
imprecatory psalms, roiling
griefs asking for something
akin to mercy, almost love.
On ‘every unbroken thing’
This poem was written after a six-week internship I served with two NGOs in Singapore serving the red-light district and the homeless. As circuit breaker measures began apace, I began to learn more and more about how vulnerable communities were disproportionately affected, suffering increased material hardship and declining mental health.
This poem reckons with the faces behind the numbers, the people behind the arguments, lives whose evanescence and invisibility belie the strongest and most unbending of wills.
The photograph accompanying this piece is courtesy of © Daniel Tan (@shredcow).