Death's Accents

By Tim Tim Cheng

Tania De Rozario - In Our Next Life (detail) (2013), Thread strung up on existing hooks/notches, Dimensions variable, The Unifiedfield, Granada, Spain
Image description: The photograph depicts a web of red threads in a white space. The long, red threads hang across and between the white walls of a dim, narrow hallway. The threads are stretched tautly and form an intricate, geometric web that occupies the entire space. Two closed doors face each other, one on each side of the hallway. In the background of the photograph, at the end of the hallway, a doorway leads into a pitch-dark space. 

Tania De Rozario - In Our Next Life (detail) (2013), Thread strung up on existing hooks/notches, Dimensions variable, The Unifiedfield, Granada, Spain
Image description: The photograph depicts a web of red threads in a dim space with white walls and a single window. The threads are stretched tautly across and between the walls, forming a large, intricate web. In the right background of the photograph, a window is visible behind the web. Red threads are tied to the window frame. The blinds are drawn halfway down; bright, white light pours in from the lower half of the window. 

i.

Death is an accent.
What does it mean

to draw red threads?

The moon elder says
I’m fated to be 
with a certain person.

The government says
I’m not to move 
beyond the line

that's always closing in.

ii.

When I saw the thumbnail of the Pillar of Shame,
I mistook it for a slice of pizza.

The pillar’s base read:
struggling torsos and hollowed sockets and
mouths agape molten together pulled skyward 

into the colour of rust and burn.

They look as cheesy as what I was feeling
for the city, for you.

You're the first friend I sent a screenshot to.

I was sad
and trying to be flirtatious.

iii.

Leslie sang you left but you're scattered all around

My mom said Leslie looked beautiful
despite falling from height. It's a shame he liked boys. 

My friends said it's great he liked boys.
No woman could have him if my friends couldn't.

iv.

A drowned giant's penis is displayed in a circus.
Some people don't even look. It's been a while.

Villagers rummage through a bombed castle’s remnants
to build their own houses.

A statue is torn down after another.
They now stack healthily by our pillows.

v.

It's quite clustered here. I'm moving past
things to hear death better. 

vi.

Death first hid in Potsdam's grey sun, in a book
folded at hand. From its corner, a red dot faltered. 
Its truth was brief, a poppy-coloured trail
highlighting the texture of where words were not.

It turned out I was reading to smash a spider
more than to learn what my body liked
with recipes, poems, or 

someone unbuttoning me.

vii.

Timeline: things I learned

He died. 

(I only met him twice.
He was rude to his staff but kind to me.)

(I did return his room key!

His fat dick was like a weird mush-
room.) 

viii.

Past burning barricades, past crowds
receding from the police, I searched
for you, quivering like an alarm: I
was jealous of couples who fought
together. I was never brave enough.

ix.

Narcissists leave to love 
what's left behind.

I've started to try loving
a little bigger than myself.

The first thing I practice 
is speech

which is in love with itself:
if we dug our own graves

through marriage,
I'd take your surname,

giving me
the same married name

as one of our most hated leaders.
We could laugh to tears: 

while I fuck the whole city up,
you'd just be like her husband,

whom many’d love to think
awesomely distant—

as if being unloved
was in itself a death sentence.

Tania De Rozario - Tiptoe (detail) (2003), Dry transfer text on eggshells, Dimensions variable, Singapore
Image description: The close-up shot depicts a single, cracked eggshell placed on a beige platform. On the eggshell are the words “then…,” “YOU,” “...you?” and more, in printed text. A piece of the eggshell has been broken off from its top, leaving an irregularly-shaped hole. The egg has been emptied out, leaving only the shell. The eggshell casts a dark shadow on the beige platform; the background of the image is almost entirely dark. 

Tania De Rozario - Tiptoe (detail) (2003), Dry transfer text on eggshells, Dimensions variable, Singapore
Image description: On a gray ground, a large, square, manhole cover, photographed upside-down, is labeled with the words  “W.W.B.Co. SINGAPORE.” The ground surrounding it is strewn with dried leaves and nine cracked eggshells. All the eggshells have words printed on them.

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Tim Tim Cheng is a poet and a teacher from Hong Kong, currently based between Edinburgh and London. Her pamphlet Tapping at Glass is out with Verve in February 2023. Her poems appeared in POETRY, The Rialto, Ambit, and elsewhere. Her latest appearances include the Hidden Door festival, BBC Scotland, and Singapore Writers Festival. Her work explores daughterhood, class, ecology, multilingualism, forms of activism, tattooing, and music. timtimcheng.com

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Tania De Rozario is a writer and visual artist. She is the author of three books and is a Lambda Literary Award finalist. Her work has won prizes from the New Ohio Review, The Comstock Review and Singapore’s Golden Point Awards. Her collection of essays, Dinner on Monster Island, comes out with Harper Perennial in Spring 2024. Born in Singapore, she now lives and works on the traditional unceded territories of the Musqueam, Squamish, and Tsleil-Waututh First Nations, colonially known as Vancouver, Canada.

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