Arlene Ang

Tuesday, September 25, 2007

Bali in Retrospect
by Arlene Ang

Things I remember most snap like a postcard slideshow: beach peddlers on my back, a stray dog lounging on a deserted beach, nasi goreng and table napkins that summon old grease, brem bali pool to drown dinner, geckoes improvising a shadow theatre behind lampshades. I quickly send the peddlers to the devil together with their insistence and 1-dollar watches, the dog must be sunburnt by now, brown rice hatted by sunnyside egg rouses a saliva gland in my tongue, the napkin dresses my lips with rancid balm, brown liqueur soothes me while I watch with feigned disinterest wart-backed reptiles leap in heat just before copulation. Acknowledgements: Drexel Online Journal, 2004

Washing of the Feet by Arlene Ang My feet were always dirty. Eight years old at least and still incapable of running with slippers in the house. I often delighted over how the sound they made on cold floor pattered like rain on banana leaves. Every night my father swept me on his shoulders for a giraffe ride before I could stash the grime under bedcovers. For years he washed my feet in the bathroom sink like Christ trapped in space-time continuum that changed clear water to mud. Acknowledgements: Retrozine (Issue 5, Fall 2003)

image Born in Manila, Philippines, Arlene Ang presently lives in Spinea, Italy. She is the author of The Desecration of Doves (iUniverse, 2005). Her poetry has appeared in In Posse Review, Magma, Poetry Ireland, Rattle and Smiths Knoll. She received the 2006 Frogmore Poetry Prize (UK) and serves as a poetry editor for The Pedestal Magazine and Press 1. More of her work can be viewed at http://www.leafscape.org/aang

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