Unmarked Treasure / poems by Cyril Wong...
// MATH PAPER PRESS MATH PAPER PRESS, an imprint of BOOKSACTUALLY is a small press publisher of poetry, new wave novellas, full-length novels, and essays. Its eclectic range of literary and visual works also includes photography collections, memoirs and young adult fiction. MATH PAPER PRESS also distributes books by small selected presses. . . . // UNMARKED TREASURE poems by Cyril Wong
A GHOST steps out of its body after a suicide and looks back at it in wonder. The poet wonders at his own existence and struggles between actual living and a desire to depart. Recipient of the Singapore Literature Prize, this collection is Cyril Wong’s most personal sequence of poems, held together by memories about family life and intimate relationships, these moments charged with the pain of love, dreams and death and an unflinching exploration of the self.
Published by MATH PAPER PRESS (2012) Distributed by MATH PAPER PRESS ISBN-13: 978-981-05-0408-3 Retail Price: SGD 16.00
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THE AFFAIR
— My father, a recent retiree, decided to have an affair with the broom. My mother never suspected a thing. She only wondered once, and only for a split second, if her husband was perhaps spending too much of his free time doing housework. A few months into the affair, the broom asked him to marry her. “I can’t. I already have a wife,” he replied. “But we can always have an affair.” And they did. As my mother continued to work in the day, he would pull out the broom from closet by her waist and dance her down the corridors of the house, her bristly dress sweeping erotically across the dusty marble. He even told the broom how deeply he loved her. She would look at him for a long time after that and answer that she would never let him go.
THE BURNING FIELD
— The perfect poem would arrive when I am forty, or maybe older, I told myself before coming home this evening to the voice of ma and pa scraping like plates of the earth along a fault, while my sister crumbled like a house on fire outside their bedroom door. And I knew I could not wait. That night, I sat before my computer screen and waited for the poem to come like rain upon a burning field, and did not sleep.
— Excerpt from Unmarked Treasure by Cyril Wong
Published by
M ATH P APER P RESS by BooksActually No. 9 Yong Siak Street Singapore 168645 t / +65 6222 9195 http://booksactually.com/mathpaperpress.html Math Paper Press is a small press publishing by BooksActually that deals with short experimental novellas, poetry and essays. Math Paper Press also distributes books by selected small presses.
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