we used to be runaways in an abandoned airport
i dreamt teenage sweat in the alcove of a highway toyota, i dreamt dreaming
then waking to three ryuichi hiroki movies in a petulant row, arguing so self
-interestedly, i dreamt not a single soul airported anymore but me & my girl
friend & her girl friend, duty free-dwelling past tragedy flights, i dreamt we
lost to time by losing time on each & every other, i dreamt a soldier breaking
in on a brisk walk, green uniform unseeing, i dreamt all the real unrealized
with us the exception, i dreamt a world unworlding, i dreamt somehow arca
& xinlisupreme & tracy chapman survived, empty shelves brought to reverie
by live voices on the speaker, from the outside, cooing in, i dreamt it cool
to run all day on carpets never molding, speed heartbeat my almost-cum,
half a death, i dreamt how every flag in the ex-tamwé railway station ends
up strangling each other in the isolating heat, draped over dead soldier
windows, or down under college basement stairways, in the mess
of dripping, filthy summers: the buzzzzzzz of nothing, or on backroad
signposts, faint & neonlit at night, begging godgodgod please make me
happy here, at the least, if you won’t want to take me out. & so i found
myself waking to no movie– it was such regret, the most peace i was
ever at, a mourning– so damn me that i once thought myself free.
sex memoir abecedarian
a hand, always a hand. we are hand-first creatures.
boys become women when pressed right. of course we know, we
caved in, already. yes, the cave had sagging muscles, had never
driven a car, walked a marathon, fed on sand, or fucked itself
enough to start to fear, what is left, what is it,
for me, in this state, with this state—but the cave took it
gracefully, had a most beautiful collapse, failed tour en l’air:
hard crash fireworks, stage of rocks, all unwittingly violent.
i wanted only to write something beautiful, and be
justified in its memory. like believing wild fire for what it is. or
knowing ash as once-treasured. frankly: unsimple delusions. the body
landscapes itself with every terrible history, new contours fucked by new
mythologies, wounds a 21st-century everything-map—but the cage, it stops.
now i’m 4’11” of malnourishment. now i’m a liar. now i’m
open water and every ship i own is on happy water, party foals stumbling
piss-poor into cold lovers. and yes, so yes, the body seeks touch: see how
queers love autoerotic asphyxiation—how queers love walking back on their
raucous, repugnant, ratty words. once i met a woman who hurt me
so kindly i despised her for it.
took my dished-out masochism and fled two summers
until i could burn myself, moaning for her softer hands, praying to a
voyeur god. and let’s say it like it is—they raped me and so
would god, if he wasn’t so ashamed. o sex therapist of our heavenly father—
xylophone the thought, as you do, into his
yielding holes. unlearn shame—open up your
zipped-up heart. want it. want. what more to ask?
t.r. san is a Burmese & transgender lesbian poet, loosely based in Yangon. their work can be found in The Offing, The Cincinnati Review, Best of the Net, & elsewhere. read & reach @thoushallkill on Twitter/X or trsan.carrd.co.
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