brother

Jonathan Chan

Art: ‘Under the Sun’, by Peerada Liewchanpatana (@peeradaliew)

after oscar brown jr.

brother, where are you?
bound and broken, born
away in rooms with no
light, in sites with no
shade.

brother, where are you?
praying over pus-filled
fingers, rent soles, and
screws in your spine,
with more fear than
there can be days.

brother, where are you?
tongue torn and turned,
coarsened by unskinned
okra and grainy rice, dhal
that settles in an
acrid film.

brother, where are you?
sent and swindled, sworn
to swallow salary cuts on
inscrutable contracts, for
there is no pulse in
fettered shame.

brother, where are you?
tears moistening the
pockets in which they
remain, blurred in
heat and solid
rain.

brother, where are you?
father, mother, sister,
wife, son, daughter,
nephew, brother
dream.

brother, where are you?
etched in concrete, cut
grass and swept sidewalks,
gleaming structures from
mottled hands.

brother, please, sir,
help me? just tell me
when, tell me when,
where are you sir,
please?

---

On ‘brother’

Driven by a desire to learn about the issues faced by the migrant worker community in Singapore, I began interning with HealthServe, a non-governmental organisation established to provide medical, social and financial assistance to migrant workers embroiled in injury compensation or salary dispute cases. This piece emerged from a solemn recognition of the relative invisibility of their challenges to the general Singaporean populace: debts to agents, yearning for their families, physical injuries from laborious work, poor-quality food. My hope is that this piece can prove a complement to the many stirring pieces already composed by Singapore’s many worker-poets.

The art accompanying this piece is ‘Under the Sun’ , courtesy of © Peerada Liewchanpatana (@peeradaliew). The illustration was first donated to Project Postcard, an initiative which aims to provide financial and emotional support to the migrant worker community in Singapore.