Tammy Ho Lai-Ming



SHOULD WE TRY SOMETHING NEW FOR A CHANGE?

We had looked forward to the apocalypse
for so long just to see it not happen.
It's like unrequited love.

But I am glad you're alive,
along with the 1,458 bacteria species
in your belly button.

It's gross but I still want to see you undress
next to the bathtub. I don't
even want you to be clean.

This morning I thought to myself:
all the books that you had annotated
in your college hand exist to meet my eyes.

Had you known it then, though, you would
write something more intellectual,
not ‘Willy, aren’t you pathetic?’

They say love sometimes can’t agree
with itself on what form to take.
I say:

On Venus, one day is longer than one year.
I want to live in Venusian time with you,
at least in the first moments.



THE FASTEST CAT FEEDER NOW FEEDS ONLY ONE CAT

My neighbours are away every Monday, Thursday and Saturday.
They do not take their cats. They have two.
They had two.

Perhaps there is no room in the car.
My neighbours drive all the way from London to Manchester.

Sometimes they take their bikes
and they stand high on the roof of their car.

Fancy two people sitting on those bikes.
Wouldn't they be very tall?

Tall enough, perhaps, to have
their necks cut off
by a bridge or overpass.



Tammy Ho Lai-Ming is a Hong Kong-born writer currently based in London, UK. She is a founding co-editor of Cha: An Asian Literary Journal and the marketing director of Fleeting Books. More at www.sighming.com.
 
 
previous page     contents     next page