Yong Shu Hoong has authored one poetry chapbook, Right of the Soil (2016), as well as five poetry collections, including Frottage (2005) and The Viewing Party (2013), which won the Singapore Literature Prize in 2006 and 2014 respectively. His poems and short stories have been published in literary journals like Quarterly Literary Review Singapore and Asia Literary Review (Hong Kong), and anthologies like Language for a New Century (W.W. Norton, 2008). He is the editor of anthologies like Passages: Stories of Unspoken Journeys (2013), as well as Here Now There After (2017), which was part of The Commuting Reader series commissioned for the #BuySingLit movement. He is one of the four co-authors of The Adopted: Stories from Angkor (2015) and Lost Bodies: Poems Between Portugal and Home (2016).
Skin-deep
When a batch of my books arrives
from my publisher’s warehouse, I notice
Added annotations: yellowed specks
and blotches; I worry about customer
complaints over such imperfections.
A more understanding reader accepts
these pages as living tissues capable
of aging gracefully with the weather.
Nothing remains in mint condition
For too long. When I part my shirt,
I try to decrypt the coded message
of moles new and ancient; scars
of different vintages; spots, like the
smattering on the sun’s photosphere…
Then learning how Roman soldiers
used to chisel faces off statues, I
consider what memories I wish to
blanch from history, which words
to erase from skin. And enquire:
Should I advocate a return to that
shrink-wrapped state of newness?
Or otherwise remain, like grand
trees that lent me their name,
peaceable within reams of barks:
What’s mottled, and overlaid with lichens,
is a new body for my remaining journey.
深入皮相
当自己一批诗集从
出版社货仓 抵达家中 赫然发觉
竟新添注脚：大小黄斑
点点。我有点忧心，会否
有人客诉，是瑕疵品
善解人意的读者一定理解：
书页也如生死的皮肤组织
是阴晴干湿、岁月的优雅见证
一切皆不能恒久弥新
太久。像舍一件上衣时
我尽可能为一切新旧斑、痣
属不同复古潮流的痕 太阳敷于上
的一层浅薄光晕等 密码般解密
在知悉罗马士兵如何
自雕像上锥除一张张的脸后
我更思索自己会从历史中漂白
哪份记忆 把哪些文辞
从皮肤上删改剔除？并追问：
我是否还该鼓吹 回归
裹上透明包装纸 的那种新
又或，留。留如树会借我名字
留若树死留皮 成纸成册 留则
成就树之宏伟不朽 与强悍巍峨——
而那长苔、 长廯的将是我
留存人间最后旅程 的新肉身
(Translation by Chow Teck Seng)