Thin Gold Chain
Rent from DeepDyve- Thin Gold Chain
1. the fish market
Chinatown, in Singapore,in the market three-quartersdown below the street,hardly lit in the swelter,fish, without ice,lie hacked throughthe spine behindtheir stiff gills. Giantfrogs hunch inwoven bamboo,sulfurous and still,while black turtlesin basins scratch their waynowhere to be free.You sweat at the neckline’sthin gold chainand plead, “Let’sleave here immediately.”Lead the way out then,shadowy as ifthrough a concrete caveof butcher block’scleavered cartilage,grass eels teeminggold-greenor skin strippedpale-pinkin the living heat. [End Page 27]
2. cage birds
British khaki is gonewith Maughamand the mysteriesof the carrefour of the East,winter steamerswith their district officers,their wivesreleased from the shadowsof verandahsand the lastscratching Victrola,brothers dancing withsisters in siftingtropical light.But the songbirds are still herewhere we drink coffeeunder their dreamyChinese cagesshaped to each bird’s bodyand hung on wiresbetween trees,one bird to a cagesuspended insexual proximity.It’s no surprise they singonly to their own,sharma to sharma,merbok to merbok,thrush to thrush.
3. one degree above latitude zero
You shouldn’t hate this place so much,turning your backwithout sheets or clothesto sleep offthe clinging heat,leaving me the divideof your spine.This is the inside-outof the world the wayyou often love it, en route, [End Page 28] and no one else we knowat the fulcrum of hemispheres,constellationssee-sawing unseenin an Asian city night.There’s nothing subtlein such opposition,southern autumn,our spring whenthe monsoon reverses itselfacross the equator.Its massive systemof winds is likea turning in the heartto the strange islandcontinent we leftin a downpourover coastal sugarcane.
4. dark whatever
We navigate the day,voyaging the MRTamong the mixed … portionof mankind out abroadon their own affairs.At Jurong Lakewe stand on the red bridgewatching the iridescenceof kingfishersswooping the murkand surface break.What did Conrad write of this island?Dark whatever, you say …a deep detachmentfrom the forms and coloursof this world.For us, the contrary,as if these weretesting watersto awaken our senses,a blue-green birdan opal. [End Page 29]
5. last tiger in singapore
Victoria ended the nineteenth centurydying in the firstyear of the twentieth.Soon after, the last tigerin Singaporewas shot in the Billiards Roomof the Raffles Hotel.Then the last clouded leopardwas gone too,the last mouse deer,the last porcupine.A century after Victoria,the day’s last rivethammers a highriseat sunset, the lastprayer is sungat dusk in the mosque,the last thoughtwe share about travelon our last stop home,the thingswe say before sleep,the last wordsI read to you aboutthe Sri Mariamman Temple,that Tamils still walkthe bed of coalsbut are seenhot-footing the last steps. [End Page 30]
Jeffrey Greene is the author of four poetry collections, a memoir, and two nature books. A collection of his poems, dialogues, and prose pieces, Shades of the Other Shore, was published in 2013. A third nature book, on wild edibles, is forthcoming in 2015. He directs creative writing at the American University of Paris and teaches in the Pan-European MFA program.
