By Shilpa Dikshit Thapliyal

Hot Girls Have Stomach Issues
Kimberley Chia Qin
AFTERIMAGE (2026) / 126 pages / SGD 20.90

Elsewhere, the Cosmos Cracks
Chrystal Ho
AFTERIMAGE (2025) / 114 pages / SGD 20.90

For the past month, most of us have observed, with disdain, the shroud of haze blurring our skyline, casting a veil on buildings, turning them into shadowy, dystopian silhouettes. The lack of clean, pure air that we take for granted is discomfiting and significantly disrupts the way we lead our daily lives. What happens when our lives are altered by something invisible from without and within?

Perforating the hazy skies and navigating their way around these imperatives are two debut poetry collections: Kimberley Chia Qin's Hot Girls Have Stomach Issues and Chrystal Ho's Elsewhere, the Cosmos Cracks.  

To begin with, how does a "hot girl", who is imagined to have glowing skin, toned body, delicate aura and a composed demeanour, "slide down" an unglamorous hill of "gross" bowel symptoms, diarrhoea, cramping, bloating and an unpredictable gut? What unfolds when the perception of a "pure woman" is subverted and overturned with humour and candour?

In his Carnivalesque theory, Russian theorist Mikhail Bakhtin propounds that societal hierarchies, norms and taboos can be overturned and mocked through expressive humour and parody. By creating an atmosphere of a 'carnival', where kings are usurped by clowns; boundaries and rules are dissolved; the orderly world can be turned upon its head. One aspect of his theory was the Grotesque Body where he subverts the 'purity' of the body by openly discussing 'gross' bodily functions through comic expression and unpolished candour. This subversion releases tightly held narratives and dismantles pretentious solemnity.

The theory can be extended to viral Internet memes, including #HotGirlsHaveIBS which caught on like wild fire, so much so that hot pink billboards with "Hot Girls have IBS" were displayed in several cities across California. Millions of social media users across the world felt vindicated when the meme punctured and challenged the fantasy of the perfect female body. The meme aimed to destigmatise gut-related issues and proudly reclaim the female body, making her desirable despite having irritable bowel syndrome (IBS).

Chia's collection negotiates this viral TikTok trend, together with Bakhtin's grotesque and invites the reader to her space of internal vulnerabilities, discomfort and grief, as she poses deeper questions about her matrilineage and inheritance. As a performance poet, Chia's prosody of the spoken word is spread dramatically on the page. Seeking inspiration from established spoken word poets such as Sharon Olds, Chia brings raw visceral imagery in her poems. Take for instance, 'Foetal Longing', the opening poem of her collection. She writes:

And in the beginning, light overflowed. Or,
that is the version they tell me: a single,
strangled cry; some vast topographic
redness, mounds of clot heaped on skin,
[...]

Penned in free verse, the poem starts with a declarative, alluding to the concept of cosmic creation. While the first line signifies birth by producing an abstract, expansive image of light which "overflowed", the second line quickly shifts to a speaker who is distancing herself from a narrative or a story about her birth. The speaker concedes that there may be more than one "version" of the story. Moving to the visceral "mounds of clot heaped on skin", Chia paints a visual image that represents excess, again alluding to Bakhtin's Grotesque Body. In the process of giving birth, the bare female body is unpolished, oozing bodily discharges.

[...] the bracing shiver
of the mother's heart, giddiness
indiscernible from omen; [...]
[...] How adoration and regret
must have cupped her heaving body
[...]
a voice would venture from the umbilicus,
and this time she would listen.

As the poem progresses, the matrilineage theme surfaces as the speaker's mother is overcome by a surge of mixed emotions – probable exhilaration, joy, doubt and some trepidation, as suggested by "giddiness" and "bracing shiver". The speaker surprises the reader by transitioning from memory of the past to the present moment: "I part the curtain and gaze upon / the hull of the moment knowing". As an adult, the speaker can now understand her mother, "how adoration and regret / must have cupped her heaving body" and is keen to connect with her again by going back in time through the "umbilicus" and wonders whether it can become a conduit of communication between them. The intersubjectivity on display hints at some lack of communication between the speaker and mother. She imagines that returning to the past might allow her mother to become an attentive listener, and that probably could repair the fractured mother-daughter relationship. One can see why Chia would commence her collection with this poem. It is successful in evoking the visceral image of creating, giving birth and tying the poet's vulnerabilities, her desire to connect deeply with her mother, even if it meant to go back in time. This poem sets the theme of the collection and pulls the reader to flip the pages.

'Daughters' is another significant poem that draws one's attention. In a moment of epiphany, the poet declares, "And suddenly as if submerged the room blurs". She builds the narrative around foremothers, where generational and familial boundaries "blur": "the realization that my mother is no longer my mother / but the daughter of her own". Chia acknowledges the moment when she realises that her mother too was a young child who needed care and attention. She goes deeper into matrilineage when she speaks of her grandmother: "my grandmother not my crane-like guardian, / but a silver-haired mother, holding on—". The poet flashes a formidable image of her grandmother as a "crane-like guardian", and immediately revokes it by suggesting a more soft, maternal image of a "silver-haired mother". By doing so, she successfully makes her point of women who also play the role of emotional anchors in families. The successive lines, which are written with double line breaks, put emphasis and reiterate the sentiment of familial matrilineal inheritance:

My hands are her hands are hers.

Her heart is her heart is mine.

We were all girls, once.

We were all apart, once.

The use of "hands" as a synecdoche of genealogy is alluringly indicative of how nurture and a loving touch can be passed down through generations. The next two lines offer a revelation: "We were all girls, once. / We were all apart, once." By employing the word "girls", the poet highlights and acknowledges her foremothers as individuals in their own right, with their own set of vulnerabilities, insecurities just like hers. One can sense a reconciliation here, wherein the poet understands that hierarchies can be dissolved once one understands that behind every maternal figure, there is a young girl who needs to be loved and cared for.

Looking at her genealogy through a different lens, Chia explores possibly inherited gut-issues, and fleshes them in the titular poem, 'Hot Girls Have Stomach Issues'. Chia's opening lines make light of her symptoms by adding a sense of comic relief: "My mother tells me that this belly ache / will feel like peanuts compared with giving / birth…" Glimpses of Bakhtin's Carnivalesque theory emerge when she candidly mentions unpleasant bodily functions "unsavoury splendour—more gas / than child." She regrets not being able to savour a table-full of food and attributes it to her "destiny".

I crouched by my grandmother's bedside
as doctors slithered down her gullet, searching
for a sign: acid clawing its way up throat;
walls wealed reddish raw; the stomach,
unable to live with itself. Perhaps our bodies
were not made to contain the multitudes of
this earth, […]

The readers are made aware of her fear and the resurfacing of her insecurities through deft employment of words such as "crouched" and "bedside" which demonstrate her fear and helplessness respectively as she watches her grandmother undergo a medical procedure. The reader is again led to a startling and grotesque reptilian image of a medical examination that "slithered" down her grandmother's gut revealing "walls wealed reddish raw". The poet resigns to this endless search for a root cause by conceding that this may be a genetic disposition. She alludes to Whitman's "I contain multitudes" from 'Song of Myself', in which he proposes that humans can have several versions of themselves through contradiction, shifting roles and thoughts. Despondent and introspective, she states that, regarding her stomach and related issues, there is no alternative existence or contradiction. Therefore, she and her foremothers were "not made to contain the multitudes".

[...] nearest emergency exit three panic attacks down
the street, soiled or, at worst, one eternity's metro
ride home, all while googly-eyed tourists
gush: she has her mother's bowels! I wonder
if this is how my mother and hers before felt
in the ward, ballooning with ache as they
scooped me from the womb.
[...]
the body always revolting, committing
arson from the inside.

Chia furthers the discussion around embarrassing toilet visits and unpredictable bowel emergencies. What happens when the body refuses to cooperate? Chia subverts the adage of "pristine beauty" in a "girl". Her unrhythmic lines mirror the fluctuations of the female body. It begs the reader to pay attention to the discomfiting body that is anything but "pure" by un-tabooing bloat, gas, unpredictable toilet visits and the debilitating bout of monthly cramping, all of which she describes as "the body always revolting, committing / arson from the inside".

Another noticeable poem in the collection is 'Poetic Aphasia'. According to studies, aphasia is a neurological language disorder with symptoms including one's inability to speak in coherent sentences. It also impacts the ability to understand language and recognise words, both spoken and written. What makes this poem stand out is the precision of language and Chia's ability to analyse personal loss, heartbreak and grief from a distance. She starts with the departure of an S.O. and states that analysis of a heartbreak is "easier" as the speaker can now focus on how she was reduced by the relationship. She'd rather analyse her grief than allow it to overwhelm her with reverberation:

On the day of your leaving it is easier to dissect the ways
in which you have halved me than to sit with the reverb;

One can observe the speaker's desire to locate her pain and yet know that it is impossible to contain her tears which are bound to overflow – "Cry myself a river". Referencing the language disorder, Chia admits, "In this poem I forget how to speak, / occasionally." She takes responsibility for her failed relationship and admits to being equally at fault – "both murdered each other". The fractured sense of self, the resulting emotions spill into language and language spills into the physical space around her: "rhymes hive around my bathroom / sink."

I will find another word for how we have both murdered each other
on the cruellest days. Today the rhymes hive around my bathroom

sink. Every syllable orbits tragedy, leaves the toilet seat up.

Chia's strength lies in holding her burning questions like a flaming torch, with the aim to shed light on all who are afflicted by similar syndromes. Her ability to deploy her physical discomfort as a tool to question and explore deeper themes such as matrilineage and inheritance is admirable. While one admires the transparency with which Chia explores these topics, one observes a labyrinth of veils around some poems. Her strength of long spoken-word-lines is shaken while condensing her thoughts into precise shortened lines. Take for instance the poem 'Free'. While the reader is drawn to the image of an olive tree and the marionette, the essence of the poem is lost by appearances of a bureaucrat, a child, a marionette, an olive tree, and food items such as wheat and juice. One struggles to locate the invisible thread that ties them together:

[...]. There must be some promise
for the olive tree, folding so far backward,
[...]
A bureaucrat calls himself god
then renames another thing. [...]
steals a loaf and says it's wheat's penance.
At dawn, a child will plant a garden for
peace. She sleeps on a hardness most
will never come to know. Prays,
for wholeness when she goes.
In our mornings: sour juice and
juvenile dread. The news tangles its
marionette. We should be so
lucky—to have deserved none
of our good fortune.

Through most of her collection, one can observe Chia's verbosity of performance poetry shift smoothly from stage to page. Elements of performance are visible in her voice, dramatic writing style, the inclusion of visceral, raw and at times comic imagery which can captivate the audience. One hopes to see more of her brilliance as she develops her voice as a poet on the page.

On the other hand, what happens when habitats are destroyed, rising sea levels threaten landscapes, the environment is slow-poisoned by pollutants and urbanisation goes beyond control? In her debut collection, Elsewhere, the Cosmos Cracks, Ho is seen to sit with these pertinent questions and examine ecological devastation, human greed and nature's endurance in renewal and creating beauty despite the challenges thrown at it.

'Mirror, mirror' makes for a very compelling ecological/urban poem. The title of the poem prepares the reader to do some soul-searching and truthful inspection:

Spare me the fantasy of gondolas
in Singapore. What I want to know
is how the sambar deer will learn
to tread water, now twice evicted
from its home by displaced silt
and sand. Last night, I dreamt
that the sea had risen to the window
of my fourth-storey bedroom, frothing
in the colour of whitening toothpaste,
the water, the same prussian blue that stains
the places that have been grazed over
and over by cyanide.

Set in the speaker's home country, Singapore, she starts with an almost irritable tone wherein she despises the fantasy of making Singapore a romanticised man-made getaway with Venice-themed waterways – "spare me the fantasy of gondolas". She would rather have habitats of sambar deer preserved than have touristy man-made waterways across the island. Studies state that last five years have seen the deer population increase from 15 to 120. But widespread reclamation of forested land and the ensuing displacement of precious wildlife can endanger their numbers once again: "how the sambar deer will learn / to tread water, now twice evicted / from its home by this place silt / and sand." The speaker is worried about the loss of wildlife habitats as humans encroach upon forested areas. Using the image of "silt and sand" the speaker emphasises that in an endeavour to create more land through reclamation, humans are evicting wildlife from their natural habitat – "twice evicted". She continues: "Last night I dreamt / that the sea had risen to the window / of my fourth-storey bedroom". This portrays the anxiety that is overcoming the speaker. She is worried that climate change is reaching her doorstep and may consume her very soon. She concludes with an urgency in her thought-provoking question:

How long more before we return
along with the sand and sweet deer
and blasted pigeons, to the bottom
of the Sea from which we came?

The theme of pensive reflection surfaces again in another poem, 'At the Hamadryas Baboon Exhibit'. Ho takes the opportunity of a visit to the Baboon exhibit to express her concerns and helplessness regarding the world we inhabit and the environment we are creating/destroying. According to online resources, the Hamadryas Baboon is also called the sacred baboon. It was regarded as one of the sacred animals in the Egyptian world, appearing in several roles in the ancient Egyptian religion. Ho writes:

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.

Ho starts the poem by introducing the image of a glass screen in the first line: "Through the glass, a fingerprint-smothered world." This image is used to create a distance, one may interpret it as the speaker's attempt to separate the viewer from the object, The world is seen "through the glass" rather than directly. But the glass is not clean: "fingerprint-smothered". This suggests that the human pollutes and suffocates the natural world, leaving his fingerprints all over it. The speaker continues with introspection and likens our mechanical daily routine as "swinging pendulums". One admires the next line which overtly depicts care and tenderness in relationships but can also be interpreted as a state of constant flux: "fingers combing through each other's hair." The speaker explains that, overcome with the weight of monotony – "Tired of waiting for something / to happen" one trespasses – "wanders" into new territory and may contaminate nature's beauty – to "urinate". One may also interpret it as the toxic waste dumped by humans in the environment. Another striking line is "Elsewhere, the cosmos cracks into bloom", a part of which the poet chooses as the title of her collection as well. The expansive "cosmos" which is all pervading "cracks". This disturbing thought is quickly followed by a tender culmination – "into bloom", suggesting that the enormity of the cosmos may be fractured and ruptured, yet it overcomes the destruction through creation. The poem juxtaposes ecological loss with nature's enduring capacity for renewal, suggesting that nature generates beauty despite man's wilful destruction.

Much of Ho's collection can be seen as a product of her research as a resident at the National Library Creative Residency with the National Library Board. During her tenure, Ho did much research on Agnes Joaquim (1854–1899), a second-generation Singaporean of Persian-Armenian descent. She is best known for cross-breeding the hybrid orchid Vanda Miss Joaquim, now Singapore's national flower, which was named after her. Ho's interest is piqued by the controversy surrounding the legacy of the orchid. Joaquim was an award-winning horticulturist with several international awards under her belt. The controversy pertained to whether Joaquim had artificially bred two species of orchids together to derive the hybrid or whether she had chanced upon a natural orchid on a walk around her garden. The controversy was at last put to rest in 2016 when the National Parks Board and the National Heritage Board officially documented Joaquim to be the breeder of the orchid.

This makes Ho's two poems, 'Eulogy for Agnes' and 'The Woman in the Locket', significant additions to the collection. The former is accompanied by a portrait of Joaquim. Referring to Ho's 'Index of Images', one understands that it is, in fact, a photograph of Joaquim from a locket passed down through her family. By choosing to title the poem as 'The Woman in the Locket', Ho conveys to the readers her sense of close connection to Joaquim. Ho cherishes the memory and legacy of Joaquim. She opens the poem with an epigraph by Teo Eng Soon in which he embellishes a narrative surrounding Joaquim discovering the orchid in a clump of bamboo, during a walk in her garden rather than artificially hybridising it. Ho opens 'The Woman in the Locket' with a question addressed to Joaquim:

Are you angry, I want to ask.
I worry that you'll say no;
that you'll say yes, once—
for even after you're recognised
as the first woman in the world to breed a hybrid orchid
you're still known on the internet as
"Agnes Joaquim, Gardener".

Ho's indignation at the diminishment of Joaquim's achievements is palpable. This direct second-person address reveals that Ho is highly concerned that unfounded narratives may erase Joaquim's achievements, and she is vexed while imagining that Joaquim herself may have resigned herself to such historical misrepresentation. Ho's juxtaposition of "first woman in the world to breed a hybrid orchid" to a diminutive "Agnes Joaquim, Gardener" places emphasis on her apprehension of Joaquim being relegated to a mere, insignificant gardener by documenting factual inaccuracies.

Ho's tone shifts from being anxious to being vehement. Advocating for Joaquim, she says – "I protest— / for if we consider / the principle of things / how is it that— / given the granular facts —". She evokes ethics and factual accuracy in "granular facts". But it is the last few lines which carry the maximum punch. She adds:

they still cannot romanticise
your story without writing
you out of it, while cracks
in the stories of those in power
are smoothed over, cemented
as history?

Speaking about the inequality arising due to the heavy handedness "of those in power", Ho broadens the conversation by adding a political dimension to the controversy. This also throws light on how incorrect accounting can still be held valid, once the creator ceases to resist. Historical erasures occur when "those in power" "smooth" their own stories by telling and retelling and thus "cement" fallacies as history. Interestingly, one may observe that Ho employs the word "cracks" again, but through a very different lens. Here she is dismayed and questions why inaccurate stories around the orchid were still allowed to exist despite some indicators pointing to fallacies and "cracks".

This theme builds up further in the other poem 'Eulogy for Agnes'. Through this poem, Ho can be seen to move her attention away from the controversy that had emanated through erasure and historical inaccuracies and instead focus on the enduring and authentic voice of nature which ultimately puts all doubts to rest.

These days, the orchids answer questions
on your behalf: on pods, pollen, the idea
of parentage. How to see a flower
beyond a described scent, the crisper
vowels of a corrected name.

The elegiac sentiment is portrayed strongly in the opening lines in which Ho posits the orchids to be a proxy for the late Joaquim – "orchids answer questions / on your behalf". Rather than official documents, Ho relies on the legacy that science leaves behind through nature. Alluding to the scientific process of artificial pollination and hybridising that Joaquim must have engaged in, Ho writes – "pods, pollen, the idea / of parentage." Here "parentage" is a very powerful word choice as it pulls the reader's attention to think of reproduction, lineage and what it means to birth, in this case the national flower of Singapore. One can take a moment to return to her earlier poem in which Joaquim was sadly relegated to the pages of history as "Agnes Joaquim, Gardener". In her eulogy, Ho says that Joaquim's legacy of creation is now reclaimed and there is a "corrected name" thereby suggesting that the honour of discovering Singapore's National Flower has now been reinstated and Joaquim has finally been credited for the hybrid orchid. Ho further writes:

[…] How fragile
a seed. How relentless
a flower. How much
they've answered. How much,
you must have asked.
How tremendous, each moment
of blooming. How momentous,
this life.

Ho again marvels us with her word choice of "fragile seed" and "relentless" "flower". The stark contrast between the adjectives demonstrates that creation surpasses all hurdles and is persistent in labour and hard work. These lines also touch on themes of marginalisation of women, discrediting their achievements and wilfully suppressing their talent and abilities. Ho again switches to directly addressing Joaquim – "How much, / you must have asked." Ho understands the tedious nature of experimentation and rewards that come through, after much hard work and willpower: "How tremendous, each moment / of blooming." Ho ends the eulogy with a fine summative line: "How momentous, / this life", thereby stating that Joaquim's life was indeed extraordinary and that her legacy through hybridising the Vanda Miss Joaquim orchid is worth remembering and memorialising.

Ho's ability to bring her deep research into her poetics is admirable and is the highlight of her collection. However, her laments for the wildlife and loss of natural habitats are equally endearing. 'As If Awaiting Rabbits' is a five-page poem on birds – kingfishers, sunbirds, sparrows, crows, the javan mynah and many more. Juxtaposing this long poem, is another poem – 'Poem in Which I Stage a Forest Fire', a one-line poem – "except there's nothing left to burn" which probably sums up the sentiment across most of her poems. Her poems advocate, plead, lament, vex at the burning climate change which is at our doorstep and yet to others seems to be hidden behind the quotidian. One may, however, at times feel the themes to be recurrent and repetitive and at times is left wanting of a surprising twist or a pivot in the poems.

Looking closely at both these debut voices, one appreciates the candour and sincerity of voice. Chia's Hot Girls Have Stomach Issues challenges the ideals of a perfect female body through humour and un-taboos several seemingly 'gross' body functions. Chia's uncontained carnivalesque celebration also taps into her lineage. The poems in Elsewhere, the Cosmos Cracks are very centrifugal and delve into ecological violence, destruction, human greed, and yet nature's enduring ability of renewal. Ho's precision of language and word-choices make her advocacy convincing. Both these collections look to break barriers – Chia's refusal to be contained by her physical body and Ho's beliefs in the primacy of nature, the environment and ultimately the uncontainable cosmos. One hopes and looks forward to seeing an expansion of their poetic terrain in their forthcoming works.

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