Day 28, Poet 28: Leanne Dunic

Photo by Ronnie Lee Hill

Selections from To Love The Coming End

*
Remember the days when I became a rhizome,
a thing under your surveillance, something to 
cultivate? I was obsessed with being able to grow,
to create an ideal environment for you and I.
I tried to give you attention without possession. 
I felt the lust of science and soon, you became
the subject. I studied you, no longer the root.
I gave you soil. You said the conditions weren't 
right. That's reality, you said. Reality was a syn-
onym for misfortune. I should have started the
pills then.

*
There are many types of flora in Singapore.
Parakeet flowers, orchids, bright flashes of red
and hot yellow. Sculptural foliage, umbrella
palms, and frangipanis. Different climate, dif-
ferent kinds of life. I haven't gone to Jurong
or to any of the reservoirs to explore nature. I
don't know how to care for plants. How to care
for living things.

*
Moist mountainsides, lush terrains for new shoots.
Bamboo forests, a landscape of jade green and
celadon. Variegated leaves rustle a game of telephone.

*
Singapore grows, a city of glass, as if there is no
threat of plates and quakes.


Previously published in To Love The Coming End by Chin Music.


Leanne Dunic is a multidisciplinary artist, musician, and writer. Her work has won several honors, including the Alice Munro Short Story Contest, and has appeared in publications in Canada and abroad. Leanne is the Artistic Director of the Powell Street Festival Society, a Japanese Canadian arts and culture celebration, and is the singer/guitarist of The Deep Cove.Her debut book, To Love the Coming End, is a lyric-prose travelogue that moves between Singapore, Canada, and Japan, focusing on a disillusioned author obsessed with natural disasters, ‘the curse of 11’, and the loss of a loved one.