If I died, would you bury me?
With my rifle and my buddy and me
“Purple Light” (a Singaporean army song)
National Service is a rite of passage for every able-bodied Singaporean male.
back home it is always war
war scratching at every door
you shut war leaving
antique pennies scattered
underneath the rug of your tongue
war in the water in the womb
in the convex mirror before a turn
We were a people governed by others; the British, then the Japanese.
before I was a child of my country
my country was a child
reared from the milk-white teats of
an empire a sleeping village
swaddled in fish nets
hooks no match for guns
the boots of a soldier
of a white knight with the sun
swaying like a raised flag
the fear of god
sauntering over him
It was a matter of survival… there was no alternative.
my country a child
gutted like fish organs
oozing half grown
a child watching
her father growing
flowers out of his chest
a bayonet is a blade
a child a fish
opened like a window
silently screaming
Today, every young Singaporean man, his family, his friends, consider it very natural
korkor returns from pulau tekong
brown as the roasted chest
nuts we cracked
over the tombs of our teeth
his hair shorter than
freshly shorn grass
when I run the belly of
my palm over it
it feels like mercy killing
like calming a furred beast
that the young man should perform that most demanding and noble duty of a citizen
– bearing arms in the defence of the country.
at eighteen my friends called their
rifles girlfriends
ride or die wives
of the jungle of the shell
scrape the body they held
in their sleep so peaceful
like the night before a cub is
taught to skin a smaller thing
Recruit dies after walk Soldier dies while doing chin ups SAF regular drowns during special operations training Five servicemen who died this year Soldier dies in freak incident during in-camp training Military funeral for 19-year-old NSF who died after heat stroke 21-year-old NSF dies during training exercise with smoke grenades Soldier dies in training Instructors blamed for soldier’s drowning Soldier dies
pulau tekong obstacle island
tyre swing
pull-up bar
vault wall
rope noose
our boys shedding
their skin to become
chestnuts so solid
until it meets the
right set of
teeth
Shuang Ang was born and raised in Singapore. Her work has been published by the Asian-American Writers’ Workshop, the Rumpus, and Quarterly Literary Review Singapore. She was a Breakout 8 Writers Prize Winner, and a runner-up in the Two Sylvias Press Chapbook Prize. Shuang is currently an MFA student at Sarah Lawrence College, where she is working on her debut collection.