Theophilus Kwek
Contributor Biography
Theophilus Kwek is a writer, translator, editor and independent researcher based in Singapore. He has published four full-length collections of poetry, They Speak Only Our Mother Tongue (2011), Circle Line (2013), Giving Ground (2016) and Moving House (2020). Both Circle Line and Giving Ground were shortlisted for the Singapore Literature Prize. His pamphlet, The First Five Storms (2017), was shortlisted for the Michael Marks Poetry Award and won the inaugural New Poets’ Prize. His poems, essays, reviews and translations have appeared in The Guardian, The Straits Times, The Irish Examiner, Times Literary Supplement, Harvard Divinity Bulletin, Mekong Review, Hong Kong Review of Books, and elsewhere. Today, he is Poetry Editor of the Asian Books Blog, and a member of the editorial team behind PR&TA.
Seniors’ Activity Corner
Christmas Eve, Singapore
Late-night TV mimes on-screen, while rain
pools unnoticed in the lumpy grass. I’m
out again, sleepless, when I see them
on a long thin bench holding court, minding
their own business. Nothing’s changed, says
Melchior, slapping the stone table
so as to get the last word, though Caspar
isn’t letting him have it. Naw, it’s always
the same with you, gloomy git! (And
here Balthazar chimes in,) world hasn’t
quite ended yet, has it? Round and round
they go, these three—kings of all there is—
as doors shut, the children climb to their beds,
and further yet, a lone star rises, sets.
Psalm for a Pandemic
Left to themselves, the shapes of all green things
begin to describe their own flourishing.
A field rouses itself into a mist,
a shimmer of birds among its tallest
grasses. From bridges, the bougainvillea
let their long hair down. Kerbside, the verges
surge without remorse. Even the trees
are no longer wood but water—like the sea
unshored they spill out over the pavement,
catch our feet in their slow accoutrements.
Iron gives way to ivy. Where are the
hard words now, of our roadsigns and hazards?
As hair gone uncut, the whole earth thickens.
We can be kind too, if they let us.
Author's Note:
"Seniors’ Activity Corner" was first published in Christmas Spirit: Ten Poems to Warm the Heart (Candlestick Press, 2019).
"Psalm for a Pandemic" was first published in Write Where We Are Now (Manchester Metropolitan University, 6 June 2020).
Leslie Williams
Contributor Biography
Leslie Williams is the author of two poetry collections, most recently Even the Dark, winner of the Crab Orchard Series in Poetry Open Competition. Her poems have appeared in Image, Poetry, The Christian Century, America, and elsewhere. She lives near Boston.
Shown Here in Clay
—after John the Baptist, sculpture by Thomas Marsh
Exquisite humble supplicant
asking (arms to sky)
do everything in joy and sadness
have a beginner’s mind
start by making the way
straight for someone else
accept decreasing
and taste of locust-beans
good drops of honey
listen these lustrations
need no repeating but once
and for all the cleansing
that would have been pure fire
in other rivers the face so humanly
naked the offered throat
to answer his own question
come to a bank of clay
with tax collectors women
out of wilderness and through it
burned baptismal in the river
Wayside
Purple, pink, blue—all on the same hydrangea.
It’s no mystery, how varieties of soil
will change the bloom. I was like that: rooted,
gleaning, susceptible to slight changes in pH.
These are the colors of my belief.
See, at three a.m. the thermometer
flashed 104 104 then crashed to the floor,
slapped away by a mighty blow.
My hands shook as I brought them close
to his forehead again. And then the most
beautiful digits appeared—98.6.
Weeks later it was my turn, lying in
a CT tube with only half my vision,
trying to push my mind out of prepared
prayer grooves (help me, help me, lord) to see
what lay on either side of the deep narrow
track—but I wouldn’t be let go, nudged back
and back as if by a great beast of the field,
restraining all his power to stay beside
me, eyes trained on the surrounding plain.
Hellebores
"But Jesus remained silent and gave no answer."
—Mark 14:61
Something before the high priest ripens
opens
the pomegranate hour
spilling hundreds of punchy globes
seeded winter (take, eat) he asked them
not to fall asleep
a bitten snow the surface broken
by injurious Lenten roses
landscape he would know
the pit to plow the sorrow into
a faultless
hushing there—
Our Work is Done When God Arrives
—after John the Baptist, sculpture by Thomas Marsh
Lord I’ve taken off my leather
raise my clay arms
until now my life
increasing wild with honey
and the rock the water
rushes I know him my heart
burns within I bless
my throat open
the dove comes down
moves me aside
I stand in the light
so you can carve me