ANGELINE YAP

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XIN

This is how I pray.
This is how I hold my loved ones lightly.
How like a tiny boat, my cupped hands;
how, like three dancing dots,
my children spill their laughter.

*NB: "Xin" is the Chinese ideogram for "Heart"

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SOMETIMES I BAKE MUFFINS

[to an American friend, newly introduced]

Sometimes I write poems,
and sometimes I cook or bake.

Sometimes I make muffins.
I lift down the mixing bowl from off its shelf,
and in it, I place butter to soften, then stir in sugar, beaten egg.
I add raisins, or mashed banana, and then I fold in sifted flour.
I spoon the mixture into cupcake cases, and place it
in an Italian oven which at other times bakes lasagna.

The vocabulary for describing all of this
was given to me long ago by an Irish nun.

Sometimes I cook pulut hitam.
I wash the black rice in a large pot made by Corning.
In it, I put generous amounts of water, pandan leaves,
and I set it over the flame of my La Germania hob.
The whole broth must be brought to a rolling boil,
then allowed to simmer, stirring occasionally.

To this I add gula melaka.
While I scrape the rich brown sugar,
I hear grandmother and grandaunts
bantering in a language I no longer understand,
I hear the rhythm of their scraping knives,
I see bibiks in sarongs, their hair up in tight buns,
their teeth stained betel red.

Like them, I make the inti to add to the dessert
squeezing the first cream of a grated coconut.
Unlike them, I add a dollop
of HaagenDazs vanilla when I'm in a rush.

My daughters ask why I still scrape the gula -
don't I know that I can easily dissolve it?
Break it into quarters, they say,
and the boiling water will do the trick.
But my mother scraped gula for this dish,
and also my grandmother, and her mother
and her aunts before her, I say.

Sometimes, I remember my mother's Thai grandmother,
and like the matriarch, I take up resong and anak resong,
and I squat on my haunches to grind chilli, shallots, and belachan.
But sometimes I throw it all into my Moulinex.

Sometimes I make Kook Fa Cha.
This tea made from sun-dried chrysanthemums,
I brew and drink only in my mother's Cantonese.

Sometimes in the morning I will have
cereal and milk, with juice on the side.
But sometimes I pass up Starbucks for teh tarek.

Sometimes I breakfast on thosai
and sometimes I just spread words on toasted bread.