jms xuange

jms xuange explores the fluidity of identity, embodiment, and violence through surreal and transgressive poetic forms. They live and write in Asia.

Easy read of the poems in the images above:

Pre-Booked with a Guru

I look at myself lying red on the floor. Itchy carpet. The wound’s got something stuck in it. I forgot to vacuum. There are ways to dispose of a body. I kick at my foot. Look at that oaf, like she’s sleeping off a drunk. Is it the body I need to get rid of, or the thing still rattling inside it? I think of that scene from Fargo. No one wants mess on their blouse. It’d be a lot easier to stuff headfirst into a woodchipper all my fantasies and conceptions than to find a new body. Then I could walk around empty and dead while I assembled a self. The thing to do is make a list and fold it into my pocket maybe tied to something uncomfortable to get my attention like a squirrel so when I come to unawake, I would be forced to fish it out. Boom. Using the list, I can stitch together a self. There must be shops. Or apps. An appointment could be pre-booked with a guru. Wait. I want a clean slate. What goes on the list? Wouldn’t it turn out to be the nefarious little programs someone’s already whispered into my ears, telling me when and where it was acceptable to do things like open my mouth or my legs? I need to think this out. Are squirrels rabid? I don’t want to get shots.

Between the Body and Its Menace

I collected

in my wooden begging bowl

shards of craggy glass

picked up in the village.

Snipped at rusted

barbed wire, dragged

the lengths home across

my shoulder.

The tailor wrote my measurements

on a sheet of loose-leaf paper.

With my father’s hunting knife

I sharpened

three broom handles.

In sheet metal

hacked

a dragon’s mouth

to pop my neck through –

bent, bolted,

knotted and adorned

between my body

and its menace.