Chrystal Ho: “At the Hamadryas Baboon Exhibit ”
Through the glass, a fingerprint-smothered world.
A mother runs with her child around her neck.
Each day, we move the same,
swinging pendulums, ticking time,
fingers combing through each other’s hair.
Tired of waiting for something
to happen, a young one wanders
past the edge of the glass to urinate.
Elsewhere, the cosmos cracks into bloom.
A child fiddles with a freshly splintered stick.
Isn’t it beautiful, how the world lives
and heaves? No one else hears
the strangled screams, the wood
clutched senseless in a claiming fist.
Chrystal Ho is a writer from Singapore who works with poetry and nonfiction. Keenly interested in exploring the interconnections between myth, language, and the environment, her writing has been published in The Tiger Moth Review, PR&TA Journal, and Portside Review, amongst others. A recipient of the National Library Creative Residency (2022), she is currently pursuing her Masters in Creative Writing.
