Three Poems
Esther Vincent Xueming
Le Morne beach (After Linda Gregg’s ‘Greece when Nobody’s Looking’)
The night is a new kind of blackness that surprises.
Infinite stars like crushed ice overhead. This is land birthed
by fire and water, millions of years ago. She asked,
Do you want to go and watch the sega?
Yes, he said, and they brought along the bottle.
Music on the beach, a crew directing sega dancers by bonfire
and spotlight. The sea crashing into the dazzling sky. A poetry
of blue lagoons, bleached coral and bonfires smouldering.
— —
Pilgrims
Hiking up the Piton de la Fournaise
A bumpy ride across an ashy plateau, still misty
from the rain. The air is sulphuric, tinged with grey.
We are a motley crew of travellers, bodies shaking
in the heaving car with each cratered drop.
Ground marked by potholes reminds me of the moon.
To reach the base of the breathing volcano,
we must cross the Plaine des Sables.
The hike teaches us that the body has its limits,
that we must be patient and listen.
Carefully, we trek down the mountain’s side,
on uneven steps carved out of solid rock,
an unforgiving drop to our right. Fellow hikers
daily traverse this path, treading land forged by fire, spewed
from the depths of a restless molten core, awakening
each year to remind us, it lives.
Strong, intermittent winds unsettling the dust.
As far as the eye can see, miles of dark brown rock, bulbous
and grotesque, rising towards the peak.
Rock braided into the ground like rope, gnarled
and twisted from the constant pressure of hot and cold.
I bend down to touch some porous fragments,
then wrap and keep them in my bag. Our guide
has gone on ahead, eager to make good time.
Each eruption leaves something behind, I think,
the fire giving even as it takes.
This time, we are lucky. We lose nothing but daylight.
A wandering mist swirls over the land,
taking its time to know each crevice,
name each surviving plant.
We climb the caldera, sit and eat amidst the ashes.
We shrink as the eye expands, pilgrims walking on fire.
— —
Solar eclipse
Driving in the dark, we search for the moon
against a tall, grassy landscape. Behind,
the gaping black of a road lined with old trees.
Across the island, sugarcanes rise
and bend with the wind into the expanse
of a chalky grey sky, where the moon hangs
her round face low. The wild darkness changes
her into a strange thing, impossible
to understand. The same moon now mutely passing
between sun and earth, churning cloud and sky
into a blue phantasmagoria, turning day
to night for a time. Framed by the fronds
of tropical palms, look how the fiery sun burns,
sickle-shaped with the white brightness of his longing.
Esther Vincent Xueming is the editor-in-chief and founder of The Tiger Moth Review, an eco journal of art and literature based in Singapore. She is co-editor of two poetry anthologies, Little Things (Ethos Books, 2013) and Poetry Moves (Ethos Books, 2020). Her debut poetry collection, Red Earth, which was a finalist for the 2020 Gaudy Boy Poetry Book Prize (New York) is forthcoming publication with Blue Cactus Press (Tacoma, Washington). Her favourite sea animal is the humpback whale. Photo by Ethan Leong.