So much pasta Mon cannot give it away
What’s the matter with a platter of pasta pâté?
Keep the homefries burnin—a sorbet gourmet
You too can have your own authentic Pasta Mon beret
Pasta Mon starrin on his own tv show
Yesterday’s menu’s already obsolete-o
Today, I’ll show you how to roll a pasta-filled burrito!
W/ no
habichuela
on the tuxedo
It might boil over—the pot is bubblin
It might boil over your mind that’s troublin
It might boil over—dynamite!
Might boil away to nothin, spoil your appetite?
It happened to me while readin
Weekly Reader
The future was comin—it would be beater
Beater. Deffer. Bigger forever.
Sun on the horizon—it was always risin
The Future is here—the Past is a goner
All stuffed in a pasta shell of once upon a
Time when the rhyme would be flora and fauna
A cheese syntheses: Utopian lasagna
A nickel for a can & a nickel for a bottle
A trickle-down sound from the nickel that bought you
America the Beautiful in quarantine
A cardboard mattress and a cardboard dream
Barbecue trash cans linin the Hudson
Dogs are howlin as you throw the spuds on
Pasta Mon’s recipes gettin kinda smelly
Rat ratatouille & vermin vermicelli
It might boil over the pot is bubblin
It might boil over it’s your mind that’s troublin
It might boil over—dynamite!
Might boil away to nothin, spoil your appetite?
On the good ship
Pasta Mon
Where the last macaroni is stuck to the pan
& the ship is sinkin
& the food is stinkin
& you just keep drinkin
O, oaweoh …
And remember!
“Bud” spelled backward,
… is “Dub”!
PaRT III
ReCReaTIOn & eDuCATIOn
C
HERYL
L
U
-L
IEN
T
AN
is the New York–based author of
A Tiger in the Kitchen
. She was a staff writer at the
Wall Street Journal, InStyle
, and the
Baltimore Sun;
her work has also appeared in the
New York Times
, among other publications. The Singapore native has been an artist in residence at Yaddo and the Djerassi Resident Artists Program. She is working on her second book, a novel, and is the editor of
Singapore Noir
, a fiction anthology that Akashic Books will publish in 2014.
ganja ghosts
by cheryl lu-lien tan
The lousy bugger was taking so long to get ready that Jackson’s balls really started to itch.
The tropical heat was so stifling, the scratchy polyester covering of the settee was so painfully glued to the bottom of his sweaty thighs, that Jackson wondered why he had bothered to come back to Singapore during the summer. He desperately wanted to scratch himself but he could hear Seng’s mother shuffling about somewhere nearby. In the industrial-strength fluorescent light of Auntie’s small living room, there was no hiding anything. After years of not seeing Seng or his mum—better to behave tonight.
“Aiyoh, my god …” Jackson mumbled, glancing at Richard, who was next to him on the sofa, tapping away on his phone, looking as fresh and talcum-powdered as he had an hour ago when they arrived at Seng’s. Fucking irritating, Jackson thought. After just a few years away in the States, his body had forgotten how sweltering Singapore was when it wasn’t monsoon season.
“Eh,” Jackson said to Richard, who nodded, not taking his eyes off his phone, “what are we doing tonight?”
“Fucker,” Richard responded, looking up and poking his third finger in Jackson’s direction. “You don’t remember, ah? Singapore, Wednesday night—nothing to do, lah!”
Seng’s door opened suddenly, sending a blast of ice-cold air into the living room. Bugger couldn’t even share his bloody air-con, Jackson thought. Seng, oblivious as usual, slowly made his way around the room, picking up his platinum TAG Heuer from the dining table and slipping it on his wrist, taking his keys off the hook next to the altar, then stopping to light a joss stick, bowing three times to his dad’s grim face in a framed black-and-white photo before jabbing the incense in an ash-brimmed rice bowl.
“Eh—girls, stop complaining. Tonight is different, lah,” Seng said to his friends, tapping his hand on his chest pocket, stopping when his fingers found the shape of his lighter. “Ma,” he shouted toward the kitchen as he reached into his back pocket for his Marlboro Menthol Lights, “we’re making a move!” Sliding a cigarette between his lips so he could fire up the moment they left, he raised two fingers, gestured toward the narrow, chipped door, and started walking.
After all these years, the bugger still had the same kwai lan air he had even when he was fifteen. Whenever they walked into any room, whether it was a lecture hall or the front VIP section at Pump Room, Seng always swaggered ahead of the two of them, chest puffed out, chin slightly up, as he surveyed the place, watching people as they watched him, wondering who the fuck he was. Not that the three of them were a gang—but with Seng looking so kwai lan, Jackson was always on guard. If other guys thought they were some sort of gang or just trying to be fuckers, who knows where a staring contest could lead even in the most stylo of clubs.
“Richard, why must you be so negative?” Seng said, turning just slightly as he opened the door to make sure the other two were indeed scrambling off the settee. “Guys, tonight—don’t worry. You just wait and see.”
Jackson tried to keep up with Seng and Richard as they quickly shuffled down the three flights of stairs, puffing and flicking. Jackson had stopped trying to smoke in Chicago after a brief attempt, just to fit in with his colleagues at the insurance office. After some months of politely holding a cigarette and resisting the urge to gag while inhaling, he had decided to accept the fact that he was going to be the sad fuck left alone in the bar or at dinner whenever his colleagues went out to have a smoke. But Seng had given him such a look when he tried to explain that he didn’t actually like smoking that Jackson just gave up and took one when Seng held out the box.
“Eh, seriously—where are we going?” Jackson asked again, wondering if he should have stayed home. His throat was starting to feel scratchy from the smoke and the heat. It was insane. Just because the three of them were best friends in secondary school didn’t mean they still had anything in common. And Seng had always been crazy—god knows what he had in mind. Great—Jackson could feel himself sweating even more.
“Almost there, lah,” Seng said, breathing heavily as he darted between a few pillars and ducked into a narrow parking lot. “Kau beh so much!”
Jackson could start to hear the chipper hum of evening kopitiam chatter as they crossed the parking lot. Seng held his right palm out, asking them to wait outside the open-air shop when they arrived. Stamping out his cigarette with his shiny brown Prada sneakers, he smoothed back his gelled hair and sauntered into the heart of the coffee shop. How the guy managed to afford all this atas European-label crap on his shipping-company peon salary, Jackson had no idea. Even Richard had a much better job than Seng—some midlevel manager at Citibank or something—and he never wore any name-brand shit.