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Moving People With Words

Poems on the MRT

ars poetica by Ang Shuang

 

Today someone told me
if everything is poetry then nothing is.

If nothing is poetry then what of
this filament of sunlight?

What of the small miracle
that in my mother’s language

there exists a word for
this veil of soft rain?

I confess I am not a poet—
the words sing their own way out

of my throat like blue
returning to sky

& I am only here
to hold the microphone—

Oh, I am not a poet but I want to believe
there is a poem in everything

that one word can kiss another
until a poem falls from their mouths

like chipped paint or first snow.
I am not a poet but I want you to know:

For years I slept in a bunk bed
beneath my sister’s & after every fight

she would climb down on a rope
of darkness & plant a palm

over my chest just to make sure
I was still breathing & oh

I swear if that isn’t a poem
then I don’t need poetry.

— Published in How to Live With Yourself (2022)

Ang Shuang is the author of How to Live With Yourself (2022), which was shortlisted for the 2024 Singapore Literature Prize. Her work has appeared in Wildness, the Asian American Writers’ Workshop, Quarterly Literary Review Singapore, and in anthologies including Perks of Being Dumped (2024). Shuang also holds an MFA in Creative Writing from Sarah Lawrence College.

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Poems on the MRT is an initiative by the National Arts Council, in partnership with SMRT and Stellar Ace. Produced by Sing Lit Station, a local literary non-profit organisation, this collaboration displays excerpts of Singapore poetry throughout SMRT’s train network, integrating local literature into the daily experience of commuters. Look out for poems in English, Chinese, Malay, and Tamil in trains on the East-West, North-South and Circle Lines, as well as videos created by local artists and featuring local poets in stations and on trains. The Chinese, Malay, and Tamil poems are available in both the original languages and English. To enjoy the full poems, commuters may read them on go.gov.sg/potm.

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