ANURAK SAELAOW

Cheat’s Tontine

This was something of a hot streak, wasn’t it?
One wonders what the hall of mirrors brings tonight.
If anything, Cheat, I still hold your loosely-lolling eye.

The begats are hardly a good place to start.
I announced it once to the corridor while everyone was resting.
Was I wrong? I scrabble up the trunk of my own body.

Senescence is a lichen furring upon our tongues.
I hold my trombone limply away from light.
Someone’s dashed oil across the kitchen floor again.

Step away from the canvas, goatherd, and stick ’em up.
I have two cold hands and an open window.
Confetti swinging still from the ears of our statues.

I was a fern sporing fruitlessly behind glass.
Time as agglomeration of mucus in the throat.
In the funhouse I sit and redact with your hammer.

Cheat’s Tontine

It’s not as if everything else has petalled away.
The sun reproaches us outside the wax museum again.
He says I tire of scrawling and crawling
              and the maltesers melt in my cheeks.
So be it. I made my assay across the rocks
just to escape it. Kissed too many earlobes,
tugged on too many ripcords. December’s air
indolent and ripe inside the cask of my lungs.

Cheat, I hold no claim to your voicebox.
I’ve had a squib of a year, or seven.
They’ve set up the scaffolds around my ears
and are prepared to tackle it in sections.

Anurak Saelaow is a Singaporean poet and writer. His work has been published in New Singapore Poetries, Hayden's Ferry Review, Quarterly Literary Review Singapore, Cultural Weekly, The Kindling, Ceriph, and elsewhere. He is the author of one chapbook, Schema (The Operating System, 2015), and holds a BA in creative writing and English from Columbia University.