​Shou Jie Eng
​

Mnemonic: Clothing
 
Belt buckle, trouser loop. Every
              morning you dress

a body, bloused and buttonholed,
              ​each knuckle pressed

in place. You tell your students
              that the energy consumption

in cotton production derives primarily
              from ginning. I tell mine

about poche, useful in making
              drawings clear.

Une poche is a pocket. Space
              between two layers of fabric.

Between cotton, sometimes. Some-
              times I rest my face

between your right arm and your rib.
              ​Sometimes you tuck
​
your hand into my pocket
              as if to say
              ​still here.

​

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Mnemonic: Cartography
 
all day I spend mapping the city
              and all day I fail to see it
              sliding drawer after drawer out
              at the archive
​
New Bedford is only a village in 1834
              so says a map made that year
              yet in the next drawer
              it becomes a view

orthography unfurling into scenography
              bridge stretching out of frame
              a city with its hills lilting
              to the horizon

the presses that make these maps
              win praise for the fineness
              of their lithography
              and close shortly after

there is a lesson to this but it is not
              one that I learn as all day I sit
              mapping the city and all day
              ​it moves out of sight
​

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--
Shou Jie Eng is a writer and architectural designer. Originally from Singapore, he runs Left Field Projects, a multi-disciplinary design practice located in Hartford, Connecticut. His writing has appeared in Harvard Review, The Los Angeles Review, Tupelo Quarterly, and elsewhere, and he teaches courses on architectural drawing and other representational topics at the Rhode Island School of Design.