Love Letters Project

12 Singapore-based writers of different races, cultures and sexualities, explore the pain of desire and the failure to belong. What does it mean to love someone who doesn’t love you back? Feelings of dislocation and ambivalence form the focus. Is love about the embrace of difference or a narcissitic reflection of oneself in another? What happens when who you are is unacceptable in the context of a relationship or society? Let these writers show you.

Curated by Cyril Wong

Eclipse

by Cyril Wong

There you are across the street
from me, the languorous eclipse
of your smile all that stops me
from pouring up in a nimbus of bricks
and shattered glass into sky. Why not
wander through these unwieldy doors
of my arms again, dance
in and out of hushed rooms,
and tap fingers across the cheeks
of my windows? Or have you
forgotten, disappearing
around another corner, time
keeping us from what we used to be,
the greying gallery of my heart
emptied of your art, the bled-out light
from a sudden wound between clouds
running down my walls like tears?

My Rainbow Existence

by Latha
Originally in Tamil. English translation by the author.

Escaping from suffocating day
into the blue twilight.
One wouldn't want to trudge along Stamford Road
into the dilapidated coffee shop for a hot cuppa
if only there was one smile
in the milling crowd of City Hall MRT station...if only.

Passing the bus stop,
turning right into the Armenian street,
tumbling down the edge of Past,
I am losing myself. I chance upon You.

A lone figure stands
next to the Peranakans,
trying to reach out.

You are the spark
among the fluttering colorless wings that flit around...

I follow

as you draw me inexorably
across an unknown boundary.
You allow me to realise the possibilities
as I soar higher and higher...

the coffee shop, the homing birds,
the brick library building, the busy roads,
the oppressive crowd, the crawling cars,
the swift current of shifting scenes
has yielded new places...

you stand still,
silent and unconquerable.
My soul is brushed by your dreams.
My being resonates to your music.
My senses respond to your rhythm.
You bring the rainbow
into my monochrome existence.

I shake myself out of the fairy tale moments
and slip back to here and now.

Yet you linger
beneath the threshold of consciousness,
vibrant and unforgettable.

A Very Simple Monologue

by Jocelyn Chua

Yes it's true. I never really loved you at all.
I only ever wanted to be with you because of the sex.
And why not? Why can't it be just as amazing? inspiring? transformative? simple as that?
The be-all-end-all- sole reason for our relationship partnership affair being here. together.
Now.
As vulnerable as Like true love but without its pretensions.
Fuck words of romance—why am I even saying all this to you?—Just… Let's just… DO it. Yes.
Here. Now.
Just the two of us.
Just you and me.
Just
Us.

How Buildings Make Love

by Ng Yi-Sheng

Men exchange fluids: we exchange their bodies, flowing through our walls
like blood and spunk. This is how buildings make love to each other, doors
and gates flung open.  And yes, we ache when lovers die: she lies hollow,
red brick pillars broken, gutted of books, he sits stripped for surgery,
hawkers ripped from his beating heart. I catch my breath: another
audience floods into my gallery from the street. Somehow still, I dare not
grow afraid of love.

Hello You

by Christopher Ujine Ong

Over the transom, under the table, across your face.
Shot through pneumatic tubes, flung on a newspaper route,
pushed through the fat pet's flap door.
Uni-cycled, bicycled, tri-cycled, quad... car.
A pass through the lips, a wink of the eye,
a sneeze done twice to think of me.
Through courier service, snail mail, e-mail, singing strippergram.
By paper lantern, balloon, Zeppelin, rocket, even.
Carrier pigeon, dog sled, pony express, oxen carriage,
chicken crossing street.
A strike of Hermes' boots, a click of Dorothy's heels, Nike's tick.
Facebook hokey poke, Twitter tweet treat, Tumblr speedy post.
Dial-up, broadband, wi-fi, wireless, but why try?

Because it's a Penny Black for your thoughts, a return-call-home,
a requitement to a love letter.

Tsk.
Truthfully, my dear, a simple "hello again" would suffice.

Rent

by Gaston Ng
Originally in Mandarin. English translation by the author.

We never ever meet during daytime,
when you're busy turning tricks for
donations, charging rent for endless
courses, who occupy your body
as efficiently as possible.

At closing, I smoke endless, curb-side cigarettes,
waiting for your last patron to go home,
waiting for our bedroom whispers to begin.

Your aspirations sound better worry-free; money-free.
Dreams flourish when reclining,
hopes fattening up for the night,
you make a killing, and begin
doing what you really want to do.

I wait helplessly.

If There's Such Thing As Tomorrow

by Zai Kuning

It's chilly in Kichijoji Park. I've not visited the temple since 20 years ago. A small temple. The only place of worship for some soul who feels differently about buildings, trees and lakes; lonely and, at times, uncertain. Quietness matters. Some surrendering to the idea that we be quiet. A sense where the ego behaves and lets us be at peace with matters that matter and evolve inside us.

Where I sit here under this tree on a bench made out of pine, healthy koi in the lake, and temples surrounded by gorgeous trees and flowers, should I feel inside or outside of this landscape? The temple is not inside the park indefinitely. Is this painting or poetry?

I was at Koya-san 12 years ago. We drove up the mountain searching for a temple named Always Happy. It's the number 2 temple in Koya-san, which has 200 other temples. No one was allowed to enter temple number 1. I danced there and met other monks in the room who asked me, 'What's home to you?' I dared not reply that 'if neither the wind nor sea asks where it might go then why should I ask where's home if not here in my heart where I'm free?'

I've not visited the tree for years. I used to sit under it. I'm waiting to be there again, freed from things that fail to comfort anymore. Feeling at home in the garden—what fool does not desire it?

Now I send you love from the garden where It has found me.

Space

by Tania De Rozario

I need some space, you said
measuring distance between
thumb and forefinger, deciding
how much of yourself would fit

inside me: You liked how I looked,
whitewashed and wet: Gotta get some

space, you said, frustrated, running
the length of my body, panic seeking
the nearest exit, fastest excuse,
easiest route to far away: You

forget who it was who loved you first
before art compelled you to seek out
foreign walls: Always I give, always
I am emptied. Always, I am left behind.

Ghost Light In Dreamscape

by Tan Chee Lay
Originally in Mandarin. English translation by the author.

My dear,
I wrote a secret poem that radiated green-rays
For you
Inside a crowded blackbox.

Then after you left, I set myself on fire
Like a ghost
That surrounded the empty stage,
As if guarding your dreams
And our shared warmth
And light.

Appendix

by Elangovan
Originally in Tamil. English translation by the author.

I am not a quicksand-diving flute
which mourns that a
snowcapped rainbow will sermonize on spectrum in the desert
birdless sky will turn blue and die within wooden-frame
windblown soundbite will self-immolate inside wild bamboo
paper-tiger's footprint will become gospel-truth for initiation-rite
but the conscience of the arts
and if you don't come to find 'you in I' anymore
I will wither as an archival appendix
do come as a visitor, friend, and lover
not only my door opens for you
the universe too

always with love,
The Substation

The Sacrifice

by Zizi Azah Abdul Majid

I bear the shame:
Of clinking wineglasses and covers of glossy American pop,
Of spilling beer mugs and inane chattering fashionistas,
Of smug yuppie heels trampling over gnarly roots.

Behind me lie shadows:
Of laced boots and cacophonous melodies pulsating with the candor of youth.
Of emboldened voices and clasped hands, hoping for peaceful revolution.
Of kindred spirits and wandering souls, connecting chains of passion.

The sacrifice.
This vulgarity.

If you love me, free me.
From politicked artistry.

To The Man Who Frequents My Bathroom

by Jason Wee

When you zipped up,
when you ran your thumb along the low edge
of your collar, the way someone
might run a finger across the lip of a cup
to rub out spilled foam or a spit stain, I knew -

our love story as told from the first hiss of urea
to close by the shake of the last drops.

That word, overreach, a three-inch bandage
for a quarter-inch wound, the Towel Club card
nudged from your back pocket as your trousers
release and part, makes me no more than a relay,
a substation in an electrifying pass-the-baton.

I knew all this, played to type -
I have not lost the art that is hard to master.
That's not the disaster, not your vanishing back
but your back-again face.

You piss and my pipes gurgle with joy.
I would blush too, but I am pale and grey.

Featured Poets

Cyril Wong is the National Arts Council's Young Artist Award and Singapore Literature Prize-winning author of eight collections of poetry. Cyril is also the founder of Softblow, one of Singapore's foremost online poetry journals. www.cyrilwong.org.

Latha has published two collections of modern Tamil poetry: Theeveli (Firespace), and Paampuk Kaattil Oru Thaazhai (A Screwpine in Snakeforest). She is currently a News Editor with Tamil Murasu.

Jocelyn Chua is a published writer and theatre performer currently based in Singapore. Having graduated with an MA in Performance Making at Goldsmiths College, University of London, UK in 2008, Jocelyn proceeded to write, devise and perform her solo piece, Love Song for an Island, for The Substation's Imprimatura: Solos in 2009, which subsequently went on tour to Bulgaria. Jocelyn has also published a book of original one-act plays entitled, Restless and Other Plays, in 2006.

Ng Yi-Sheng is a full-time freelance journalist, poet, playwright, critic and non-fiction writer.  His first collection of poetry, last boy, won the Singapore Literature Prize, and he blogs at http://lastboy.blogspot.com.

Christopher Ujine Ong is a freelance writer for Juice magazine and has poems published on an online poetry journal, Softblow. He is currently working as the Programme Manager for Design at The Substation.

Gaston Ng has recently completed his studies at the Singapore Management University. He has had his poems published in the Asia Literary Review, Quarterly Literary Review Singapore and Shampoo, and has had his work read on air at the local radio station, Lush 99.5 FM. He is currently in the midst of preparing for his debut collection of poems.

Zai Kuning deliberately complicates convenient categorization, employing a wide range of practices such as video, poetry, theatre, dance, performance art, music and installation art.
He was a luminary of the artists' vanguard of The Substation's Associate Artist programme, and still continues to be an influential practitioner of multi-disciplinary arts in Singapore.

Tania De Rozario is an artist and writer whose work deals with issues of gender, sexuality, and desire. She has exhibited across Singapore, written for local and regional publications, and is a recipient of numerous awards from the National Arts Council and various other bodies. She co-curated Etiquette, a show featuring the works of eighteen female artists at The Substation in 2010. Her poetry and prose can be found on the Quarterly Literary Review Singapore and in GASPP: a Gay Anthology of Singapore Prose and Poetry. Tania is currently teaching Contemporary Contextual Studies at LASALLE College of the Arts.

Tan Chee-Lay is an Assistant Professor of Chinese at the Nanyang Technological University, Singapore, and the Deputy Executive Director of the Singapore Center for Chinese Language. Tan has edited and authored over 20 academic and creative books. His publications include The Four Books (prose, 1999), The Yellow Raincoat (prose, 2006), and Prose of Tan Chee Lay (2009). He was awarded the Young Artist Award (Literature) by the Singapore National Art Council in 2004, and the Singapore Youth Award (Art and Culture) in 2006.

Elangovan is the Artistic Director of Agni Kootthu (Theatre of Fire) and the author of three collections of poetry and eleven collections of plays. He received the Southeast-Asia (SEA) Write Award in 1997, in Bangkok, Thailand for his bilingual contribution to poetry and theatre in Singapore.

Zizi Azah Abdul Majid is the Artistic Director of Teater Ekamatra. She has written and directed theatre performances since her teen years, and is now a leading figure of a new generation of theatre professionals. Her plays, in both the Malay and English languages, have received critical acclaim. To date, she has been at the artistic helm of seven plays and is continually expanding her body of work whilst lecturing at several arts schools in Singapore.

Jason Wee is a multi-hyphenate: an artist, a writer, a lecturer, a curator and an interior designer. He won the 2009 Voters' Prize from the Singapore Art Museum, and is the mastermind behind Grey Projects, an arts project space. Visit www.greyprojects.org.