Poetry By
Jerrold Yam
Published on: 1/17/2014
Urine
Between the humming receptionist and bodies impatiently shifting on chairs, I am cocooning its plastic shell with my palms, as if to protect warmth from surrendering to air. Its character is strangely at peace, lingering in citrus gold or blazing the elegant heat of topaz, its stream shyly tilting in the bottle on my lap. I marvel at my accelerating fears, how they appear not to intrude the sanctuary from which they stem, the bottle just another object on which we can impose, blame, and justify our insecurities. In a week there will be conclusions. As the nurse invites me in, a valued guest in this roadhouse of too many rooms, I take a moment to regret, quietly convincing myself that there is a price for everything. There is a price for everything.
Published on: 1/15/2014
Gentleman
Sending me to my door, our clothes vapored in gin and tequila, then polite offers to sneak beyond my flatmates for hard-earned privacy, how delicate our attempts at bartering means to an end, words hovering between our faces in foreplay. When you peel away the layers which outline my timid hesitations, cardigan over sock, ankle over pelvis, I am all ribbon and cardboard, unravelling with the ferocity of a lover's tongue. What can anyone desire from this? Before light overcomes the room like an accident, your shoes will be claimed, coat clumsily buttoned without my help, my limbs fallen apart in slumber. If I am lucky, a pool of warmth eddying where your torso once rests. If not, only creases to remember the chase when conquering has long proven inadequate. We know this. Use me however.
Published on: 1/13/2014
Eavesdrop
Too late for cooking when I finally accept that we have not spoken for a week, silence like dust pilfering the refrigerator's crown, milk to curdle leisurely as if embracing its expiration date. In the sushi bar at the brim of my street, pockmarked with conversation, the waiter is the waiter I remember telling you about, the same Yiruma arrangement unravelling as he passes my table. This is one place I have chosen to distract myself from the furniture, or what is possibly the beginning of everything we have promised not to encourage, your body sound asleep half an ocean away as I struggle to blame the time difference. As if on purpose, I am almost the only one left, slivers of rice and pickled ginger forsaken on the mahogany like incoherent thoughts. When the waiter invites me back, grinning, his neck gently bowed, I do not wonder if you are awake. He does not know of you. The hush does.
Published on: 1/13/2014
Doorbell
Here we are, reeling from the audacity of occupying a room together, our bodies abandoned at my bedframe as if waiting to be noticed or collected, tongues toiling assiduously at ice cream and conversation. I am not permitted this clemency, even as you begin to conquer the rift echoing between us. Your arm is not warming my shoulder, our noses not understanding odours for the first time. When your face takes mine in like walls to silence, it is not an excuse to crave. How long can proximity deny dependence? This is a room of too many omens: tap water idling in a mug, sun locked away by curtains, your shirt collapsed on the carpet like a means to an end. Yet if familiarity is what it takes for you to be here, your lips persevering in its gentle craft, its whispers roaring across the infinite dormant caves of my body, so be it. There will be fresh sheets when you call.
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