When all is done, And morning comes, When dark retreats, Our foes all beat, If you still wish To share all this, The come to me And, newly freed, Be bound again To your old friend.

They light up the sky as if bright flickering stars -obliviously.

My stretch marks aren’t art You romanticize my body just because it isn’t yours to weigh, measure, and iron I hear tiger stripes I see zippers My body’s housed my many attempts To escape

Trapped   Head held steady beneath the maroon towel, trying to breathe in the fumes of microwaved water, in strong hopes that the dark will unclog a nose blocked. Scalding water looms inches beneath a fearing face unglassed, collecting dew droplets rising to the sky.

Why Mozzarella   It started with cheese sticks on a Saturday morning reached on tip-toe from the right-side drawer of the refrigerator.  Peeled plastic independence on the way to see  Ariel fall in love just one more time.    Then onto slices with tomatoes roasted…

a caterpillar in the quiet bamboo grove does not stop to think   © 2021 S Phua

Ooo we are hitting the rough time where everything I write feels shitty. But I am here for it!   The House of River and Smoke   The house sits on an island  Made from rivers Cutting through the earth Letting the fog hide it…

G.K. Chesterton once wrote “Poets have been mysteriously silent on the subject of cheese.” Dad introduced me to the delightful taste of cheese. In our home, Dad made different flavours of cheese An omelette got cheese Rice puddle had cheese Stuffed bread had cheese Everything…

Gliding hand caress Beauties pure tortured figure Suffering eternal

The beautiful side of the herders and their wives. She remembers to tell you they ruined a country because her heart still bleed for her lover and grief won’t depart from her until she invokes what was written by the prophets in a poem like…