Jonathan Chan is a writer, editor, and graduate of the University of Cambridge. Born in New York to a Malaysian father and South Korean mother, he was raised in Singapore, where he is presently based. He is interested in questions of faith, identity, and creative expression. He has recently been moved by the writing of Tse Hao Guang, Rodrigo Dela Peña Jr., and Balli Kaur Jaswal.
overnight
unwrapping a thin conclusion, as porous as
mulberry paper around a styrofoam wedge,
stained with the depth of wine, hanja and
hangul vanishing with geometric distance,
the same tremble at the edge of swallowed
disarray, darknesses as dreaded as they are
familiar, clocked around a cone of warm,
jaundiced light, circle stark on a cragged
floor, and the mind callous for the touch
of an old face, found in the frisk of a
barely lucid afterthought, fingers firm to
frost at the hem of my pants, eyes slow
to bear the witness of morning light, thin
soreness and early vision, a formal feeling
and then the letting go –
~
roadways
up the ascent of the overpass, there
is a sunset. the taxi driver gestures
for you to take a picture. his hands
are held by the wheel. a phone camera
snatches only the overlay of blues, greys,
oranges, brushed over in thick swathes.
the light shimmers over the emptied
roads. it bounces between the grilles
and beams around the workers sprawled
like cargo. an N95 dangles above the
dashboard. circuitous concrete makes for
fruitless gazing. somewhere a wish is
displaced beneath the wheels. the strain
of a load is and isn’t a metaphor. the slosh
of coffee in a flask makes for a taut
afternoon churn. hiroshima pulses
against the windows. high beams make
themselves invisible. if you wait long
enough you might see immanence and
glimmers. even if you bear some hurt
today.
~
routines
at most, condensed in the
passage of domestic life, the
few fistfuls of need, of essence
distilled in the rotary of sunrise
and dusk – the first intake of
conscious breath, the first
stream of water down the
gullet, the first sight of light-
dappled trees, the first thin
flip of ingestible verse, the
first note eased into the ears,
the first waft of coffee in a
firmly-gripped thermos, the
first moment of silence,
drawn back into calm, the
source from which all shall
return and proceed.