"My Face"

My Face
By Ismim Putera

My face
has eyesight half as long as lightning
and daydreams as puffy as thunderclouds
eyeballs like salted eggs squirt torrents of tears
flooding the prairie along my cheeks
two dimples collect no saltwater
but voices, and childhood songs
from our great grandparents:
water rises at dawn
recede at five
Nyonya waters her flowers

My face
is a map of unrefined desert
powdered by Time
my nose is the entrance to
Pharaoh Khufu’s second tomb
—into a chest full of erotic papyrus
my mouth has an old Chinese dragon in it
circling around the palate:
so I curse the Three Character Classics
in Mandarin
—reviving Confucius from Yellow River

My face
gathers no moss nor ferns
only aquatic herbs in my ears
my furrowing brow is where you can find
ice sheets that melts only at dawn
my hair is as lush as the leaves of a jambu tree
(but with sketchy patches of barren ground)
at dusk hairline recedes like king tides
even when the moon has gone
and I row my finger along
the sandy shoreline


Ismim Putera (he/him) is a poet and writer from Sarawak, Malaysian Borneo. His work has appeared in many online literary journals and also forthcoming in Men Matters Online Journal and Paper Djinn Lyric: An Anthology of Speculative Poetry. His debut poetry chapbook Tide of Time (Mug and Paper Publishing) will be published in January 2021.