sunday in ordinary time

oldsame bodies in the season’s chairs, assuming round table positions a truth beside gospel. those who still believe play musical prayers until grace lukewarms, piecemeal in many mouths. post-credit-style popo continues after amen, give us good health like she is miracling the cabbage into a greener body. constant as rice, steam, kong kong has everyone down to a question, are you still working from home or when are you planning to travel or will I be coming with you? our syntax waxes with the weather but every dinner is every dinner so sometimes someday see how. dishes cycle like fragrant moons, roasted sesame, red wine, turnip boiled into its own afterlife. popo strings praises for a neighbour’s keema, have you ever tried keema, which we’ve shared on this very table, memory turmeric in woodgrain. after sad cake, mom worries half-slice to crumb, whispers that popo is losing her touch. like heartbeats, touch a countable noun, an inheritance. in slipping light popo palms sugar to kong kong, grinning die die because taste prefigures time. take take her arm outcropped to air, he already in another room. beatific she indexes her elbow like a grandchild. this big only she says rocking sweet to her chest. I carry you like this as if present tense is time travel or all evening has been run-on supplication, interminable prayer. remember?

Nathaniel Chew (he/him) lives, writes and libraries in Singapore. His collection featherweight (2019) won the Golden Point Award for poetry in English, and his writing is published and forthcoming in anthologies by Gaudy Boy, Longbarrow Press, Math Paper Press, Poetry School, and in ArtsEquator, Pareidolia Literary, Practice, Research & Tangential Activities, Quarterly Literary Review Singapore, et al.