jms xuange

jms xuange is a poet from western Mongolia. Her work explores unstable embodiment, dissociation, and the body as site of transformation, erasure, and misrecognition. Recent poems appear in ANMLY, Midway, Tiny Spoon, and Corporeal. She uses she/they pronouns.

Easy read of the poems in the images above:

Discard After Use

I gave it up easily,
without appointments
or booking numbers.

It was like the hand of God
reached out from a billboard
advertising a local savior
and squeezed.

My eyes popped out of my head.
I oozed.
Sticky, fluorescent.

Spotlights came on,
sirens,
radio announcements.

The other girls had names for me,
some up to six letters,
like I was a toothpaste
in a commercial.

Space-age,
other-worldly.
Overpriced.

I leak now
where the crimp came undone.

The sight of me makes you feel
unclean.

Run a rolling pin over me,
see what you get.

No one’s even bothered
to turn off the light.

Unperson

I take myself apart—
like plucking legs from a spider.

The room is lemon-scented.
The curtains shift
in front of the open window
like an advertisement in a commercial.

You could eat from the tips of my fingers
and never taste me.

If the police came in
with one of those lights
that reveal blood splatters
under layers
and years of paint—

where a psychic once said
an act of violence lived,
like a haunted baby
nursing on a breast of pain—

the cat might turn its head
and meow for its toy
in the dark.
But who could they charge?

Even absence
stands up
to be counted.

I’m Not Wearing Any Hands

I can’t follow
the thread
my lungs
unspool
or the instructions
snipped
from the folds
of an itinerant’s robe
and glued
to an index card
then put into
my pocket
I
can go
without remembering
I have pockets
or hands
eating my food
in a manner that draws
criticisms and stares
threats
to my body
I
have been asked
to leave
even the lowliest
of establishments
at hours of the night
colored red
it can be
like a war movie
a room
where a bomb
once lived
I
look out from inside
the absence of sound
there’s rubble
in my ears
the smoke
rings
I
can’t take off
the burning
I’m not wearing
any hands