Two Poems by Wing Yau

 

The Lullaby (Backmasking) 

 

Dear little baby, sleep. 

The wardrobes are too cold 

for the faces you think you see 

inside. If these paper cuts  

hurt, imagine they are just 

Mama’s grins showing  

you I love… Look outside: 

our beloved rags 

limp and shivering 

in our fruitless tears — 

How they miss 

their torn limbs 

to hold their hearts! 

Dear little baby, you should know  

no mothers are afraid  

of what their babies 

will become. So I’ll always be 

here; and over there,  

breathless between the walls. 

What’s darker than night 

is this hollowed seedpod  

I’m singing in; 

what’s deeper than night 

is a mother’s love, gasping 

next to your ears. So sleep 

now, dear child.  

The bed grows temperature- 

less as dawn creeps in — 

the longer you lie  

sweetly here.

Doraemon’s Small Light スモールライト1 

 

Xmas dinner was quiet and hot in this part of our world. 

When the jus on the lamb roast congealed like a rusty sunset you said again: 

 

I want to travel one last time in this life, to visit the places I know 

I’ll miss in the next. But distraction is my specialty at work and at home — 

 

I touched the tiny torch glued to the top of my ring and reminded you: 

We had two family trips together when I was a child. One in Japan 

 

the other Taiwan. You interrupted: was it sunrise? or sunset? 

It had to be sunset. It was in Tokyo where you gave me ¥100 

 

to try my luck at a Gachapon filled with Doraemon gadgets. 

It is no good for an emergency such as this, flecks of overchewed lamb spattered 

 

like a well-aged protest. I did what I could with what I was given, then and 

now — I shrank the things between us so we could bear their weight.  

 

When objects were tiny enough to put in our coin pouches,  

even events could be shuffled like nano blocks — the way we rearranged 

 

stories to avoid eye contact on the dining table. A slime green laser- 

beam from my forefinger knocked over the pepper shaker. The noise  

 

made us open our eyes. You at the age I am now, and happy.  

I was 10, still rubbing my eyes on your sleeves as we walked up Alishan  

 

to watch the sunrise. The sun the size of a cat’s eye at the horizon,  

so small it fits inside my eyelids. Small enough to be a dot on the top  

 

of the ring, converging our elongated shadows on the Shibuya Crossroad — 

a mother and a daughter holding hands, flashing a silent siren.

Wing Yau (she/them) is a Hong Kong-born poet. Wing’s recent work has appeared in Instant Noodles, The Garlic Press, Locative, and more. A Pushcart Prize nominee, she is currently based in Melbourne, Australia. Their debut poetry collection, The Fiction of Flying, is forthcoming in Dec 2025. Find Wing on Instagram @antidotetowork.