five poems
by jms xuange
Water Girl
It’s freshwater, not brack. The girl pulls
her finger from her mouth, searches
for cottonmouths. The surface is black,
gelatinous, and she uses a heavy stick
to clear a hole wide enough to dunk her head.
It’s like a TV show her mom won’t let her watch
or something adults talk over to keep
her from understanding. She knows
she can have as much as she wants
as long as she makes her approach like one
maintaining an altar. The water shines.
She fills two Mason jars and carries them home
in the basket of her bicycle. Her mom lets her use
the refrigerator but the girl sleeps
on the porch for the rest of the summer.
The Thing You Shelter
a gift
at one time passed
from the realm of the physical
to that of an elemental
command or
instinct
between a girl
and the hidden thing she shelters
with rocks, sticks,
strands of twine
tends
at the base of a
scraggly pine
in the far corner of the yard or
what she’s marked
for burial
and returns to in the morning
X
I’m being followed. A man in a black bowler,
a woman pushing a pram. A cloud or a force that
with time has become my driver. The absence of rain
is ominous. The streets are well lit. I thought
I was going where I usually ended up or where I
imagined in the morning or yesterday I wanted to be.
A desk. A bench in the park. I mean, there was a part of me
that always believed I had agency. This itself
was its own kind of direction. I arrive to a spot marked
with an X in black tape to a place I never expected to go.
A bulb in my head about to explode.
I’m told I’ve always been there.
Yourself in Exchange
It should retain enough of its authority
that whatever it propels you to
put your finger on
you identify as your own
and leave a part of yourself in exchange
for walking away empty handed.
The Memory Under
The dock that’s twisted like a piece
of old-fashioned candy
curling over
& into the canal
swamped
in reflection and weeds
where I’d like to walk with my valuables
packed in a box
balanced on my head
into the memory under the water
of the boat I saw tying off.
BIO: jms xuange is a poet whose work explores identity, transformation, and the quiet violence within personal and societal structures. Through fragmented language and abstract imagery, they examine the fluidity of self and the struggle for transcendence. They do not claim a nation or fixed identity. They live and write off the map.