Three Poems by Sumitra Singam

Shaping/Self

Where is the slip inside you that allows an ugly man in
tongue like a slug fat with rain
and his serrated kindnesses

he gets to choose whether you are worthy
with the height of the glass he pours
like tendrils from your heart to that place in his chest

his statured conceit, his diction, his vernacular
all shape you into being as if you ever had skin
as if you aren’t just spleen, lobed and cleft

will he unmake you with his male lack
demanding his material back
with a throat like a rift in his mantle

a yawning rib his only answer
to the question of creation
                -it all ends in ash

                -why did it begin in the first place?
it is just that water cannot hold itself
together without a hand

cupped with want

Fruit To Feed An Orphan Tongue

I am trying to remember a song
in my memory it is in Mandarin, which is different
from Cantonese or Hokkien, rounder
and more juicy, like an orange full in the sun
the singer’s name is Sally Yeh, but it can’t be Sally,
this is a name she has given the kwai lo
so they won’t butcher her real name
                - that is also lost
I don’t speak Mandarin or Hokkien or Cantonese
                (though I say chi bai
                more than fuck)
this song feels like yet another language
one that has untranslatable words for the
shame of not knowing who you are
                the saying is
                - she was born during the new moon
                - a fruit that isn’t a seed yet
                - one that doesn’t even know the reflected light of the sun

It’s Like How They Don’t Make Gift Mugs with My Name on It

Perhaps there are effigies, idols, doppelgängers
of every person ever made in God’s image in the world -
I have not found mine, though my search
has taken me to fragments of shell
on the ocean floor, crushed by the pounding of waves,
and to birds’ nests in the forks
of scraggly winter trees, unravelled
by the sifting work of small burrowing creatures
and to cumulonimbus, lined
with the promise of thunder
- my friend shows me a picture
of their doppelgänger on TV,
they have been looking as I have been,
for some image of themself, a reflection,
a way of seeing themself
from the outside,
and it is not that there isn’t
an effigy of me in the world
                (how can I know this for sure unless I extend my search
                to infinity?)
but that I am already on the outside, and all
I can ever do is look at the edges
of me, the outline
of me, my skin,
and hold it against their white one
and see how we have thought of our struggle
as the same, but
it never was



Sumitra Singam is a queer, neurodiverse Malaysian-Indian-Australian coconut who writes in Naarm/Melbourne. Her work has been published widely, nominated for a number of Best Of anthologies, and was selected for BSF 2025. She works as a psychiatrist and trauma therapist and runs workshops on how to write trauma safely, and the Yeah Nah reading series. She’ll be the one in the kitchen making chai (where’s your cardamom?). You can find her and her other publication credits on Bluesky: @pleomorphic2 & sumitrasingam.squarespace.com