our fruit king smells like rotting onions, majesty

of prickling green whose skin is the shell

of spikes. his treasures are the orientalists’

fantasy, whose rich gold beyond all

the wildest imaginings

of drunken colonialists, multiply fruitfully

beyond the counting of any british administrator.

Hail, king, whose name is conjugated thorns:

_duri, to duri, to be duried, duri-an:_

majesty, impale the tongues of civilising

barbarians with the flavoured depth of

infinite literatures beyond the wildest

nightmares of MacCaulay and all his ilk,

your flavour is rich, your texture is silk.

by Vincent Loh Xue Yan