The 2007 Harry Kurnitz Creative Writing Awards

Causeway, Freethinker, and Pontianak were my entries for this poetry competition in UCLA last year. Pontianak is however officially buried and put to rest amongst other dusty dreams. It could perhaps be floating in the cyberworld out there, though I have combed it in many vain attempts at discovering my own long lost child. Here are the other two, though I must say I have pandered almost ingratiatingly to who I thought was the intended audience. In other words, to the American judges of a competition for international students. I think their comments on these poems speak volumes, though maybe I shouldn't get into this now. Read of it what you will.

CAUSEWAY

An umbilical construction

Of motherland and child

Banked on the Straits

Stones paved in colonial legacy

Setting in the silted waters

A birth of two nations

Once severed in a bloodbath

Of war and aborted rulers

The land of the landless

Misconceived impregnable fortress

Ridden over in a swarm of strangers

Penetrating proliferating

A child afloat in unspoken hopes

Ferried across and led by a maternal prow

Amidst a sea of tired cars grimy helmets

Vessels of nurtured dreams and desires

Fed with history reprinted reread regurgitated

The causeway a link

Of a sepia past and a glossy future

Stagnant waters and the swift eddies of

Endless turmoil and unrest

Threaten to surge forth and flood

Water breaking and the cleaving of ties

As mother and child grow

Apart

Strangers and families drive through

Trampling gritty history into the soil

And stirring up clouds of political dust

FREETHINKER

Early morning ablutions

To the Quran’s mournful prayers

Travelling across the still-dark sky

The melody resounding from the minaret

Calling to followers of faith

Mid-morning assembly

Convent girls lined up in the hall

Heady hymns and wine

Communion to the

Murmurings of rosary beads

Afternoon dalliance

Sikh boyfriend with

Chinese girl in tow

Communal meals at the temple

Chants to the Gurus’ teachings

Nightly respects

And gold coins

Paid at the altar of ancestors

Of incense and yellow paper

Joss-sticks leaving pink stains