Singapore River
Lee Tze Pheng
The operation was massive;
designed to give new life
to the old lady.
We cleaned out
her arteries, removed
detritus and silt,
created a by-pass
for the old blood.
Now you can hardly tell
her history.
We have become
so health-conscious
the heart
can sometimes be troublesome.
///
from The Brink of An Amen (1991)
The Planners
Boey Kim Cheng
They plan. They build. All spaces are gridded,
filled with permutations of possibilities.
The buildings are in alignment with the roads
which meet at desired points
linked by bridges all hang
in the grace of mathematics.
They build and will not stop.
Even the sea draws back
and the skies surrender.
They erase the flaws,
the blemishes of the past,
knock off useless blocks with dental dexterity.
All gaps are plugged with gleaming gold.
The country wears perfect rows of shining teeth.
Anaesthesia,amnesia, hypnosis.
They have the means.
They have it all so it will not hurt,
so history is new again. The piling will not stop.
The drilling goes right through the fossils of last century.
But my heart would not bleed
poetry. Not a single drop
to stain the blueprint
of our past’s tomorrow.
Horny guests at New York's newly opened hotel Public are ruffling the feathers of neighbours by leaving the curtains open while they have sex.
Developed by legendary hotelier Ian Schrager and designed by Swiss firm Herzog & de Meuron, the 28-storey building at 215 Chrystie Street has only been open for two months.
But complaints are flooding in from residents of neighbouring buildings, who say Public's floor-to-ceiling windows are providing unwanted views of the X-rated activities taking place in the rooms.
Those living in apartments at 10 Stanton Street have described some of the things they have witnessed to the New York Post.
"Guys are together, girls and girls are together. They don't even pull the shades down," said Leonor Fernandez, 68.
"You see them having sex all the time, hands on the window," said 26-year-old Melissa Santos, who lives in the same building. "Not like I'm a peeping Tom, but from the corner of my eye, you can see this going on four times a week."It's interesting to me how cultural norms have shifted how people view sexuality in glass buildings. One of the earliest feminist critiques of glass buildings was that transparency was prohibitive to sexuality as people constantly felt their privacy invaded upon. But like everything else we have to view these critiques against the times. Perhaps today's proliferation of amateur pornography and advance views of sex (that do not seek to demonise or cover up) have made people less shy about sex and to some extent fucking in public or behind a screen--maybe even necessarily performative/ exhibitionistic. So while glass may have been prohibitive for sex for some back in the day, it may be the only material that gets people off today.
