Shophouse Dreaming
In a pre-war shophouse they sold charcoal,
breaking bulk into sacks and sewn, carbon
coating wall, ceiling, bench and fingernail.
They used to be They – He ran off with some
woman or drink or both, fled from his kids.
She flipped to trading gas in canisters
blue and grey, higher margins – ahead of
her time. Seven to feed upstairs, creaking
floor for beds, the boys asleep before girls,
always. Beneath casement windows, ferals
and mongrels duelled, warbled and bred in
the pungent alleyway to palm-thatched huts.
Weekends we visited Grandma in the
shophouse – still selling her gas, still fuelling
working households. Radio squawking in her
Teochew dialect, second uncle & co.
shipped the gas, fixed valves and stoves, ran the shop.
The clan came, bartered pears, pomfret, make-up
and gossip while we raced the staircase and
back lanes, as amok as village chickens.
She moved into public housing, handed
the business to her son, and then passed on.
I retrace my steps inside the new arts
academy, standing where the house stood:
there the storm drain took sis’s pillow doll,
there I bathed from the giant earthen pot,
there the nightsoil man harvested the spoils.
And here, by the national orchestra,
I suddenly remember her.
*
Ping Yi writes poetry, travelogues and fiction, and is in public service. His work has appeared in Litro, London Grip, Meniscus, La Piccioletta Barca, Sideways and Vita Poetica, and is forthcoming in Poetry Breakfast and Harbor Review. Ping Yi is from Singapore, and has also lived in Boston, MA, and Cambridge, UK.
