Daryl Lim Wei Jie (b. 1990)
SELECTED POEMS
Upsizing
after Alvin Pang
Give me a bowl of bak chor mee, with extra noodles, extra lard, extra
ter kwa, extra chili, extra vinegar but please don't charge me extra.
I want a steak big enough to sleep on, a gravy boat you can drown a
child in, fries you might mistake for new lanes of the PIE.Give me wall-to-wall salami tiles, bacon blinds, more cans than I'll
ever open, cheeses that I'll melt to use as concrete.I want an eclair so capacious I can park a Jaguar in it.
Two Jaguars. I want all the other pastries to feel threatened, to quiver out their cream.
So huge, the mountaineers will scale it for a challenge, taking celebratory licks when they reach the chocolate-coated peak, this Kilimanjaro of choux.
I want it because I'm so goddamned hungry.
I want a youtiao so massive I can go spelunking in it, explore the caves of dough, sail on the lakes of grease and find a soft, fluffy place
to snooze.Of course some sup kambing. Make it Olympic-sized, ocean-sized, a body of uncertain green visible from space, huge islands of mutton bobbing in the oily waves.
Give me a prata so huge it'll be its own country. I'll keep it warm with volcanoes, I'll feed all of Asia, there won't be enough curry in the
whole wide world.While we're at it, how about a milo dinosaur as well, with a heap of milo powder the height of Everest. I want the sugar to keep me
awake till the second coming of Christ.Then calamansi juice with sour plums, the volume of Lower Seletar Reservoir, to get my appetite up again
by Daryl Lim Wei Jie
from A Book of Changes (2016)
