I Need a Few More Minutes Inside This Insect
My eyes dissolving into an entirely new sense.
I squint anyway. High astigmatism. Bug eyes
without the funhouse mirrors. I wouldn’t mind
being dizzy more often, falling down and into things,
spilling other people’s drinks in fancy restaurants.
I’d like the attention—being asked to leave
as if I’m a degenerate whacked out
on a narcotic cooked up in an alley.
Practicing a martial art
discovered in the snowy mountains of Bhutan.
No one wants to know.
Make her go away.
A wizened maître d holds me by the arm
and draws me toward the door
as if the dark and a bed of cardboard
were where I really wanted to be.
I never liked dressing up anyway.
My clothes are gone.
It’s like I’m in a gooey pod
with a cup of coffee someone has brought me.
I can smell something medicinal
in my ears.
There’s rain outside.
Or maybe digestion—
a new neighbor moved into the second stomach.
I should crawl over with a friendly word—
a mandible full of grass.
They Have Lasers
I wish something would come besides these
aliens—
winged beings of mercy,
bees bearing honey.
There’s a hole in my roof
where the shingles were torn.
Debris from plane wrecks
and meteors
lands in the attic,
rain,
leaves.
Wildlife sneaks in.
From the floor I watch the stains
spread and
change shape
like a map of a world
newly discovered.
Even paid contractors won’t make the repairs.
We pulled a tarp over it
but what can you do—
they have lasers.
I read somewhere maybe a poem 400 years ago
about something like an escalator of light
ferrying creatures to and fro between here
and the realm on another level of consciousness,
a line snaking around the corner, folks chewing
their lips for the grand opening, end of time sale.
I push my dresser in front of the door anyway.
Instructions on Disappearance
Don’t eat flowers
or strike up conversations with worms.
When your clothes are fresh
with the suds and aroma of dirt
you’re given medicine and words to memorize.
Repeat three times, move from room to room.
Two blue pills and one red.
Twice after every meal.
Eat
in your chair not under the table.
Somewhere
between morning and forever
on the path in the mind
that leads you to a broken gate
at the back of a garden
in the opening
you hide with your eyes
there’s a bus
or a dragon
a hole
to the other side of the earth.
Go.
jms xuange writes poetry attentive to states of bodily alteration, disappearance, and quiet resistance within everyday systems of order. Their work blends the surreal with the procedural, allowing instruction, ritual, and displacement to shape the lyric voice.