Christine Chia
Two Poems
luminous grape
Imagine your faith is
a story,
a story in which a man who was God
died for a people
who never loved Him
Faith suspends
disbelief like gravity suspends
the moon from the earth
like a luminous grape
from a dying fox
who died the death
of a butterfly
dreaming of life as a human
who killed his brother in a story
y(ears)
I once knew a man who
clutched the black telephone wire
like an umbilical cord,
carrying it everywhere,
especially the bathroom
where walls bounced back
his voice to him
like his mother’s womb.
His mother
didn’t listen to him;
all his life, he looked
for a woman
who had ears
only;
her silence
would
be his.
CHRISTINE CHIA is the author of The Law of Second Marriages (Math Paper Press, 2011, 2014) and Separation: a history (Ethos Books, 2014). She is the co-editor of the groundbreaking poetry anthology A Luxury We Cannot Afford (Math Paper Press, 2014) and a featured writer for the Singapore Literature Festival in New York at the 92nd Street Y.