Miriam Wei Wei Lo (b. 1973)

SELECTED POEMS

Catching the L-Words

an epithalamium

Who can explain connection? The yes and the no of it: one thread chosen from a multitude of tangling possibilities, one thought leaping between two minds, one football kicked in the air, a heart falling, into hands held open to catch. Collision’s consequence.

Could it be happy? This chance? This collision? Do you believe? In the L-words? Not loser, not two-timing low-life, but L – L – L … Laughter, that bubbling overflow, the body caught in the moment of delight, sounding out its involuntary, infectious response—the glory of giggles. L – L – L … Long may you live in the lift of laughter, the liberating reprieve of levity, its liquid lightness.

When sorrow comes (and it will), when the story spirals out of control, when the words snap, when the bed is cold, when the balls cannot be caught, when the phone is slammed down and the screen shatters into a thousand echoing fragments of regret, may you fall into L – L – L … Love, that longsuffering thing that turns up, like God, when you least expect it, when all is lost, when there is nothing more you can do.

Don’t let go of love. Let it circle you like the rings that you wear. It is the single thing that can carry you through calamity’s cataclysm, that can turn the stories of your scars towards hope, that can bear you, shining and whole, through death’s door, into that invisible world that waits for us, where justice rolls down like waters, and righteousness like an ever-flowing stream.

May your longings always lead you to lasting landings.

Home

One Day I Will Find It

I’ll follow the smell of food: fried ikan bilis, roast lamb, mangoes;
or the sound of water touching down on sand, stones, mud.
Perhaps the code for entry will be in braille
and I must stand in a dark room at midnight, weeping
and running my fingers over two stone tablets.
It will be in my mouth—a thin wafer of honey,
the bitter salt taste of my husband’s sweat.
I will see it, I’m sure, yellow as wattle in winter
and brown as the grass under snow.

It will be a skyscraper, fifty storeys tall.
It will be the smallest, most picturesque cottage.
I will live there alone and with everyone I love.

No children are raped there.
No one eats while others go hungry.
No lying awake, wondering which woman or child
in what sweatshop has made these pyjamas I wear,
or the sheets on the bed, or the rug on the floor.
I will not have to lock the door.

Without Warning

An explosion of light. A word that is itself.
A word to possess me. An image so bright and complete
it can only be seen with eyes shut tight. As in prayer.
As in sleep—a dream that outlives reality.
An image to enter me like a knife, like a nail,
hammering in till it finds its reply, taking my body
like breath, like the strong kiss of a bridegroom,
like death, in all its finality.

Someone is at work in me,
translating this corrupt language of my body,
the dark, bitter words of my heart
into the pure language of that other place
where every word is a radiant arrival
that draws me across the threshold
and claims me as its own.

 

A Place to Return to

Bed, toilet, kitchen. Exposed brick walls.
This worn grey carpet, toys all over the floor
reminding me that I have left the life of the mind
for this. “Home!”, the children call out in the car,
“We’re going home!” They must mean this place.

I consider my father, born into a single room
that housed his whole family. And this—  
running water, six sets of taps, a fridge, a washing machine,
enough books for a dowager empress, or medieval king.

If there must be a place, a tent for the body
on this earth, I'll take this one, with the blue plumbago
waving defiantly through the natives, the climbing white jasmine
rampant over the fence, and the mulberry tree, that foreigner
so completely at home, growing taller each year.

No Epidural

after Sharon Olds, “The Language of the Brag”

arena

First the fear
then the surge—
exhilaration
pulsing through the body
with each contraction.

I toss my head and walk into the cage.
I take the stance of a fighter.

ocean

Like surfing a sixteen-metre wave—
the wall of pain rises to its roaring crest and I catch it,
keeping my feet, sliding down its face, all the way
to the shallows.

I ride all night.

ballroom

Dancing with pain—
it turns and I turn with it,
feet moving faster, and faster,
until we are blurry with motion

until I break free, laughing,
playing tricks with my mind—
I am a fish that lives in the air
and a bird that breathes in the sea.

No one can catch me.

inside

You, little one, are the bird that breathes in the sea,
surfacing, ready to roll through transition; you are the chick
rocking the egg, in unsteady motion; pressing
to break the shell from the inside.

grandstand

What is arrival but one fluid motion,
the flourish of delivery?

I swim back to shore, body spent.
I reach for something laconic:
Try that, boys.

I cradle my glistening prize.

by Miriam Wei Wei Lo
from Who Comes Calling? (2023)

 

SELECTED POEMS: “Bumboat Cruise on the Singapore River” >