Lunch Break - "Fall(ing)"

“Lunch Break” is a monthly poetry column by LIM Xin Hwee, appearing every fourth Friday of the month. Look for insightful appreciations of contemporary poems from around the world. Sign up for notifications here.

Fall(ing)
By Natalie Wang

Come October
the maples will set
your world aflame.
When the dead leaves slither
along pavements, it is the same
sound as a ghost shuffling
its way into life, pretending
that it has something
left to give.

The poets will toast
to every falling leaf.
They might compose
drunk sonnets on change.
Or loss. Or death. I do not know
the difference while I live
on an island where the trees stay
the same throughout the year.


Natalie Wang’s debut poetry collection, in which the above poem “Fall(ing)” appears, has a curious name: The Woman Who Turned Into A Vending Machine. The title involves a surreal change, in which a woman with agency transforms into a device that automatizes giving. Wang, in an interview with Popspoken, explains that this transformation is the result of a woman’s inability to change the oppressive structures that surround her. Such oppression, in Wang’s country Singapore and elsewhere, provides women with the impetus to change themselves. Throughout this collection, many of the poems reveal the dissonance between the speaker and the Singaporean reality that she is faced with. In “Fall(ing)”, the speaker expresses her resignation towards change, or rather, a lack of change.

On first reading, it appears that this resignation is directed towards where she is: “an island where the trees stay/ the same throughout the year”, a place that does not change. The speaker compares her country to another country that seemingly transforms throughout the year, and laments not knowing the difference between “loss” and “death” as a result. Recognisably Wang’s poem bears a resemblance to the sonnet form that is referenced in the poem. The first stanza is slightly longer than the second, and some end rhymes (“aflame”/”same”, “shuffling”/”pretending”/”something”) are sparsely inserted. Wang has taken liberties with the sonnet form, but this freedom works to convey the dissonance between where the speaker is and where the speaker imagines other poets are writing their “drunk sonnets”. The speaker takes a stab at the form but cannot follow it fully due to where she is currently. Perhaps, she would rather be somewhere else. More pertinently, the use of the sonnet form could also allude to a lost love due to geographical distance between the speaker and the addressee. In this case, not being cognisant of the difference between loss and death signals to us that to the speaker, losing a beloved feels like death.

Yet, the notion that an environment that constantly changes is better than one that does not is troubled upon a closer reading. The world of the other poets is disturbingly “aflame” in her imagination, and whatever activity that comes round during autumn is hollow as it is merely the sound of a ghost “shuffling/ its way into life”. By evoking images such as ghosts “pretending”, Wang cleverly juxtaposes the incorporeal with the abstract, thus enhancing the elements of “loss” and “death”. This idea is furthered by the use of the subjunctive (“The maples will set/ [...] The poets will toast”) throughout the poem. What the writer seeks to help the reader understand is this: we may be at different phases in life, but our experiences converge to the same point. The changing seasons, like stasis, lead to a certain death.

Wang guides the reader to the idea that despondence as a reaction to futility is valid. After the speaker admits that she “do[es] not know/ the difference”, she does not follow up with a desire for knowledge. “Fall(ing)” does not provide a solution to the discomfort that may arise from living in a country that appears to pale in comparison to somewhere else. For some people, Singapore is an extremely stifling environment to live in. By allowing speculation and imagination to take over, however, Wang nuances the idea that spending the future somewhere else may be better. Even if what we have is not ideal, romanticising what we cannot have is not helpful to our experience of the world. Those who are surrounded by “dead leaves” in autumn may likewise wonder what it is like to “live/ on an island where the trees stay/ the same throughout the year”.


The poem ‘Fall(ing)’ is from The Woman Who Turned into a Vending Machine, by Natalie Wang (Singapore: Math Paper Press, 2018). The poem is reproduced by permission of publisher.

LIM Xin Hwee has a keen interest in language and how people use it. A member of the writing collective /s@ber, she has written many things, important and unimportant. She graduated from NTU with a degree in English and Linguistics.