Tunnel #2 (Merlion)

By LAWDENMARC DECAMORA

The shadow tall and lean, inspired by a lighthouse, squints at the Merlion. My morning behavior skips breakfast just to tell my body to overcome the effects of the Merlion. People at the pet store are quitting their jobs only to watch the Merlion spurt water from its mouth like the tunnels of human love. The newly admitted patient who is seen from the open window waves at the Merlion. Clairvoyants finally predict a winner with the face of Singapura tattooed on the mythic scales of the Merlion. Lovers split, fully convinced about the Mertiger calling itself no more as the Merlion. Children down 10,000 bottles of Yakult so they can help the Merlion save this lion city and the sea overflowing with centillion neon. The televangelist reports about a new miracle and how it takes advantage of the daily shifts of the Merlion, spatial to temporal, particle to plexus. Accountants give celebrities free hugs, their palms are sweating, after taxing the civil case of the Merlion. But hold on there, youngster. What is the color of the Merlion? Does it speak a foreign language like Resilience? Does it roar, swim, walk aimlessly around the Central Business District? Will it quit water and start eating poetry? I know a place where it can go when it’s alone. Through its mouth, a tunnel: right where it starts it ends.

[Purchase Issue 18 here.]

 

Lawdenmarc Decamora is a Best of the Net and Pushcart-nominated writer and professor from the Philippines. He holds an MFA in creative writing and is an MA candidate in literary and cultural studies. His work, including short fiction, poetry, and criticism, has been widely published in 18 countries around the world. He has work forthcoming in The Seattle Review, North Dakota Quarterly, The Comstock Review, AJAR Press, and in anthologies What We Talk About When We Talk About It: Variations on the Theme of Love, and Mingled Voices 4 of the International Proverse Poetry Prize.

 

Tunnel #2 (Merlion)

Related Posts

Book cover of Concerning the Angels by Rafael Alberti

January 2025 Poetry Feature #2: Rafael Alberti in Translation

RAFAEL ALBERTI
Who are you, tell us, who do not remember you / from earth or from heaven? // Your shadow—tell us—is from what space? / What light, say it, has reached / into our realm? // Where do you come from, tell us, / shadow without words, / that we don’t remember you?

The Old Current Book Cover

January 2025 Poetry Feature #1: Brad Leithauser

BRAD LEITHAUSER
I’m twenty-seven, maybe too old to be / Upended by this, the manifold / Foreignness of it all, the fulfilling / Queer grandeur of it all, // But we each come into ourselves / As each can, in our own / Unmetered time (our own sweet way), / And for me this day’s more thrilling

December 2024 Poetry Feature #2: New Work from our Contributors

PETER FILKINS
All night long / it bucked and surged / past the window // and my breath / fogging the glass, / a yellow moon // headlamping / through mist, / the tunnel of sleep, // towns racing past. // Down at the crossroads, / warning in the bell, / beams lowering // on traffic before / the whomp of air