Eileen Chong is a Singapore-born, Sydney-based poet. She won the Poets Union Youth Fellowship in 2010 and was the Australian Poetry Fellow for 2011-2012. Her first book of poems, _Burning Rice_, was highly commended in the Anne Elder Award 2012 and was shortlisted for the Australian Prime Minister's Literary Awards in poetry in 2013. "Shophouse, Victoria Street" is a poem in five parts about growing up in a large extended family in a Singapore shophouse. "Singapore" is a poem that examines the ideas of architectural, cultural and familial amnesia. Both poems were first published in _Burning Rice_, 2012, Australian Poetry Limited.
Singapore
by Eileen Chong
‘So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past.’
The Great Gatsby, F. Scott Fitzgerald
The driver, my friend, squints into the rain.
We took the wrong turn-off but Singapore
is so small it doesn’t matter where you go.
She doesn’t know Change Alley. The new hotel
lies over Clifford Pier. I see the ghosts of red lights
at the harbour. I hear long-dead horses stamp and pull
at their tethers as wagons are loaded with sacks
swollen with rice, sugar and spices. At Tanjong Rhu
even the water’s edge has shifted. Yet a memory
of my great-grandmother’s benevolent, sepia face
swimming out from between jars at her shop remains.
I have her jade earrings now, deep green cabochons
gripped by gold teeth, mounted on stems that pass
through my flesh and hers at once. Tomorrow,
my grandmother turns eighty. For now, I wear the ring
I chose for her: a bezel-set sapphire surrounded
by diamonds. It’s not easy to find good jade
in Australia, much less old jade. The car stops
outside the botanical gardens: a fine cloud mists
the crown of trees. I watch the glossy streets and see
myself aged three, seven, twenty. It’s as though I can never leave.
