+ Lee Weng Choy's strangework feature: Lan Gen Bah (LGB)

"Last September, we did an exhibition of paintings at The Substation by Lan Gen Bah (or LGB as she's known), called "Game Theory". Here's the front of the invite card (which is part of the work, sort of); there were two versions, a black on white, and white on black." - Lee Weng Choy

+ Cyril Wong

The Apples

The apples wait in a bowl. Pick one.
The apples tug at the hem of my hunger – the love of apples.
The apples appear in a poem about a bowl of apples.
The apples are as serene as monks, oblivious to their redness.
The apples cannot know the colour of the bowl they are in.
The apples in the poem are not edible. Neither is the bowl.
The apples fight for my attention. In fact, this happens very slowly.
The apples revel in their nudity and know nothing about sin.
The apples genuinely believe they are the original fruit.
The apples sometimes wish they were more than themselves.
The apples have heard of apples larger than themselves.
The apples deny any relationship to pears.
The apples wonder if it is true, that green apples exist.
The apples riot in the dark, but they cannot win. Still, they try.
The apples are a reminder that time is never still.
The apples do not know what awaits them after they have been eaten.
The apples have nightmares about the darkness of bins and trash bags.
The apples would like to be reborn as any creature with legs.
The apples are too restless to meditate.
The apples were communist, but they soon converted to capitalism.
The apples knock each other off the top of the bowl – the politics of apples.
The apples curse quietly when one of them is chosen.
The apples dream of orchards, the generosity of rain and sunlight.
The apples remember suspension, gravity, then falling–
The apples mourn when none of them is chosen.
The apples concede to my teeth, filling my mouth with their insides.
The apples, unlike us, would prefer time to hurry.
The apples at the bottom admire the apples at the top.
The apples wait to steal my life and turn it into an apple.
The apples cannot think beyond the bowl, the table, let alone the open window.
The apples are still waiting.

*

"I was thinking about all the different themes that tended to present themselves in poetry again and again. I eventually decided to distil these ideas without much of a concern with having to ground them in a usually familiar context. Instead I decided to go all surreal and set these ideas in the image of a bowl of apples. I like apples."

+ A BooksActually feature: Boey Kim Cheng

$25.00 at BooksActually

Consulate

Consulate was the brand he smoked,
most at ease when wrapped in its clouds,
solvent, all mistakes erased.
I liked the quick scratch of the match,
the blue flare, the cupped flame
held to the waiting tip,
the burn like a red star,
his billowing nostrils
and the peace coursing through
as he leaned back in the lounge.
When I lit my first cigarette
I angled the match like he did,
but failed to make it catch
at the first strike on the Swallow box.

I waggled my wrist
and flicked the match
over the rail of the Cavanagh Bridge
and felt the incendiary burn,
the giddy rush, and my father
drifting back, the bad debts dissolved
in the peace,
the reconciliatory smoke.

+ Brian Gothong Tan

Heavenly Cakes and Sentimental Flowers, June 2003

*

"that piece was my debut in the art world... and it was a miracle that it ever happened. I couldn't find a gallery space that would accept a nobody, but SAM (Singapore Arts Museum) did! It set the tone of the way I have been creating my works....I don't think there are many multimedia installation artists around in S'pore I think that create large-scale installations."

+ Ng Yi-Sheng

adamsapple

Like any child of Eden, I am fascinated
by things that protrude; give me
the knob of your throat for a juiceful
crisping mouthmark of Washington crunch;
epiglottis, inflamed in man, between oesophagus
and windpipe, who granted you
the right to separate spoken breath
from eaten lump?

I’ll lick you draculawise as you shudder between
the scales of breaking voice;
let me unsnowwhite you, sliding
it up your sauropod neck like a bullet,
swallowed at birth; we’ll take it together
by our tongues, tooth against tastebud,
and realise, as if for the first time
we’re six days old
and naked as ever.