ACE CHU

Ace Chu is a writer from Singapore—his recent work can be found in places like Quarterly Literary Review Singapore, Pithead Chapel, and Tiger Moth Review. He is most definitely an animal person—there’s really only one animal that makes his skin crawl, and it’s the CREATONOTOS GANGIS, specifically when they unfurl their… appendages. It’s tough for him to think about. He is trying to overcome this discomfort, upon which he will become truly unstoppable. Look for him at acechu.com.

FIRST DAY ON PATROL

1. I am still a child in the ways of this world.

2. An abandoned pamphlet reads: GENERATIONAL DELIVERANCE.

3. Time becomes a thing you can put into your breast pocket and pat flat.

4. A dried leaf, curled up, looks like the bony carcass of a small rat.

5. I have learned to step outside my body.

6. I am strolling the cereal aisle, gun and baton at my waist. I am heavy at the hips, hands hovering over my belt. I am the worst thing that could happen in a place like this. I assess the merchandise, my helpless subjects.

7. A skeletal man hunches, comparing the prices of two bundles of sliced cheese. I think of that creature in the desert, eating of its own heart.

8. The fish are drowsing in the ice, stiff, eyes glazed.

9. Every fruit waits, longs to be picked up, to be held and touched and stroked.

10. It occurs to me that I am part of this ecosystem, a large thing in a blue package.

11. I pick up a pen a woman has dropped. She avoids my eyes.

12. The butcher’s stall. Pink, lurid light. It seems strange to me that flesh from the same animal can be packaged in so many different ways, wrapped in cling wrap skin, each assigned a styrofoam spine.

13. Safe. Back in the van. I look around, and realize that each of us is a thing unto ourselves. It doesn’t feel like it, not right now. We fall into a half-slumber until we are deposited again.

14. In the station, I let go of a piss I’ve been holding on to.

15. There is a poster with a baby on it, so faded it looks like it's on its way to a better place. A word is scratched out. It reads: Have nothing to hide; Say ______ to Corruption.

16. Of course I write. What else is there to do besides?

SECOND DAY ON PATROL

1. Is there a sensation that does not dull?

2. Dog walks past. Toy poodle. Nose low to the ground. Tail high, wagging.

3. Time, removed from the pocket, unfolds into a piece of paper with a hundred scrawls.

4. I am thinking of the feeling of skin on skin.

5. A crab without a skull. Top shell removed. It could have been born that way, lived its whole life that way, with no safety at all, currents gently stroking its brain.

6. Fish in a tank forget which way is up. Eyes blind from harsh light. Face marred with contact against glass.

7. Three brains. Palm size. Three sixty. Two hearts, a fist and a half each. Four forty-seven.

8. Is there some kind of pulsing organism that churns out plastic-wrapped bundles of little life?

9. The creeping sensation that all the meat here comes from the same pig—past the heavy metal door, sharp scalpels skim off the side of the mother, eagle before Prometheus and his liver, the seat of emotion, only for it to grow back every morning, in time for the next shift.

10. All milk from the same cow, the way all fish are from the same sea.

11. A dog walks the same routes every day with the same vigor. What is it in the world that they see?

12. In the van, I have taken to counting the squares on the cages outside the windows.

13. It is dim, that place from which we are birthed bleary-eyed into the world, that trembling, rattling cradle.

14. A monstrous arrival, heavy footfalls upon carpark concrete.

15. Then comes the finest of rains. A mist, barely perceptible, leaves nothing on your skin to remember. Fine, like stroking the fur on a dog’s belly. Rolled onto the back, looking expectantly for you to partake, to begin again.

16. A mercy for the unfeeling. Christmas approaches. A day and a year reach their conclusion.

THIRD DAY ON PATROL

1. Time becomes something I burn to keep warm.

2. Morning morning morning morning morning morning

3. He says it once for each of us as he walks past.

4. Bark peels like the frills of a dress, scales to be shucked.

5. Rain came later in the day. Heavy.

6. Unclasp my belt to take a shit. My gun lies on its side, forlorn—I angle the muzzle away from my body. I am watching myself in the mirror. Thinking about looking down the barrel, I open my mouth to yawn.

7. I press my fingernails into a lemon, staining them with scent.

8. A whole stomach, blanched and turned inside out. Five ears, stacked, eavesdropping on each other.

9. Always, that infernal waiting. In my boots, I imagine that my feet are encased in soil, packed in tight. Roots bloom from the dark seeds of my feet; I sway imperceptibly to the breeze. Do I have enough to grow?

10. Loaves of sliced bread in packets of every color; leaning trees in full bloom line the aisle walkway.

11. Nervous, my fingers explore the hollow bottom of my holster.

12. Older woman. Hair dyed reddish brown. Gray roots pushing through, carving a barren route down the middle of her scalp.

13. Words blur like in a dream.

14. If the world were flipped upside down, I would remain. Blood would rush to my head and give me a headache.

15. I am a ghost, visible only to children and dogs.

16. I press my fingers to my upper lip for the smell of lemon. Instead, I find the scent of gunpowder.

BLOOD MOON

1. A meteorological marvel.

2. The stoplight hangs still in the sky. A second, to my left, lower to the ground. The twin moons of

Mars, Phobos and Deimos. Terror, dread, panic, fear.

3. The duration of an eclipse always seems so long because no one’s keeping time. We can’t tell

when it began, so we wouldn’t recognise an end.

4. Rain drips, the dregs of something greater. Something passed.

5. Howling violence comes upon the wind, a hatred in search of a home.

6. We have drawn the short end of the stick.

Are you familiar with the birds that sing the end of a day? They are the street sweepers after the revel. Heavy, their songs stumble towards the soil like falling snow. Always, they clump together. They sing as though they are one voice among many, another tired hand to turn the wheel of evening. They sing as though they cannot hear themselves.

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