All shoes were kept indoors on Thursdays.
Even slippers bartered from my brothers,
creased as upturned palms, were detained
in Grandma’s mahogany cabinet. Sometimes
there would still be lights in the neighbourhood
when they came, a flurry of footsteps like
a child’s impatient antics. I could feel
their eyes scouring banana leaf and rattan mats
before each household, and where
a careless wife had left her clogs outside
they would enter, lifting her out of sleep
and on their shoulders like angels, carrying
her to a field of lalang where the night winds
drowned out any smatterings of resistance,
where no husband, by dawn’s faithful arrival,
could deny the script of her torn sarong.

*

The first time we sang the Japanese anthem
I knew teachers were not so different from us,
arms astute as masts, fists like anchors
lowered into the shivering air. Some of the
sepak takraw boys refused to recognise
the flag of our new masters, its plump
crimson circle like an eye ready to
catch misbehaviour. When the ordeal
was over, teachers mumbled to themselves
as if trying to get rid of the words, Kimigayo,
Syonanto, tiredly gravelling over their tongues.
Like rules from another game of marbles
we soon had it memorised, and before long
there was no need for any other lyric.

*

What my mother saw
in the morning: two
mounds of sweet potato
losing themselves
to humidity, yam leaves
unfurled and oblivious,
everything that mattered to her
still doused in sleep, and in
the distant fields, a quiet
spool of barbed wire
gentle as handwriting,
winking back the sun.