What God Took Your Legs Away
Poetry • 96 pages • $20.90
Publishing 5 Jul 2025
Poems by
Wahid Al Mamun
Launching 12 Jul 2025 at Book Bar (57 Duxton Road, Singapore 089521).
More details to be released soon.
These poems strive to leap out of the collection. These poems build a bed, watch a cult film, read the news. They take endless flights between the personal and the political, between the specific contours of Singapore’s landscape and the broader trajectories of global movements and inequity. But they can never find their way home.
it took me eight years but here I am, carving, carving / against my wounds until I hit the bone and start
Written over eight years, Wahid Al Mamun’s debut collection of poems is an intricate exploration of migration, memory and love, built on the intersections of private griefs and communal narratives, uttered in a voice both tender and unflinching. What God Took Your Legs Away deftly interrogates the tensions between the body, the nation and their intertwined histories, and asks what it means to write with—and against—one’s (be)longings. It’ll bring you to your knees and take your breath away.
-
(b. 1997) is a poet and Ph.D. student in Anthropology at McGill University. He grew up in Singapore and lives in Montréal.
Wahid’s creative and academic interests lie in the intersections of migration, performance and intimacy. His poems and translations have appeared in the Cordite Poetry Review, PR&TA Journal and QLRS, and has also appeared in installations at the Singapore Art Museum, People’s Studio, and on the MRT. He has also performed his works at writers’ festivals in Singapore and Melbourne.
What God Took Your Legs Away is his debut in print.

KEEP THE SPIRIT OF POETRY ALIVE
KEEP THE SPIRIT OF POETRY ALIVE
LEND YOUR SUPPORT + KEEP THE SPIRIT OF POETRY ALIVE
AFTERIMAGE is a non-profit poetry press reimagining what literary publishing can look like in Singapore. We champion local poets through beautifully made books, bold public programming, and long-term care for each title.
Your support helps us do more than publish books—it lets us build culture. Every dollar goes towards creating work, paying artists, and fuelling a literary scene that’s vibrant, inclusive, and built to last. Check out our donor entitlements, or better yet:
Boh Beh Zhao
Poetry • 104 pages • $20.90
Published 24 Apr 2025
Poems by
Cheng Him
Read the ST #1 Bestseller today:
“I finally can understand poetry. It is written as it should be—in Singlish… to see it in this form is nothing short of brilliant.”—Gurmit Singh
Cheng Him’s explosive debut poetry collection is a narrative-in-poems exploring the inner psyche of the mythical Singaporean Ah Seng, made prismatic through the lens of Buddhism and mid-2010s clubbing fervour.
From the tumultuous days of his childhood to the wayward hurricane of his youth, Boh Beh Zhao charts the trajectory of someone wandering through life as though it has no beginning or conceivable end, and plots his eventual landing into the barren fields of the latter. Hop onboard Ah Seng’s chaotic journey and ask yourself: what does it mean to live life so fast that all else seems to stand still?
ALLTHETIME 01
Poetry • 84 pages • $20.90
Published 27 Feb 2025
Poems by
Rosaly Puthucheary,
ArunDtiha & Zeha
With a critical introduction by
Cyril Wong
“If Singapore poetry is to reflect our actual lives, not just our aspirational narratives, then rib/cage is a luminous benchmark.”—Quarterly Literary Review Singapore