Out There I Hear the Body Dreaming
By kevin martens wong zhi qiang
originally published thursday, 10 october 2024
on tigri sa chang
Koitadu | Content warning
Please first read about my writing in the Skribadorang or Writing section on the Igleza page here before reading the piece below so you have advance warning about the rather spicy things that I often like to write about, and why I choose to write about them, especially in terms of subverting unhealthy stereotypes about gay people, Kristang people, Creole people, Indigenous people, masculinity, neurodivergence, the body, healthy forms of attraction and sexuality, and using my writing to process the severe individual, collective and inter-generational trauma and abuse I have faced across my life.
Out there I fear the story revealing
itself to be me;
I fear gods, importances, cadences.
I fear the lightest dark-brown skin
unfolding on the gentlest, queerest breeze.
I fear taking up space-time. Probability.
I fear singing underneath the coral trees.
I fear being unliberated. Undifferentiated.
I fear drowning in an aching, abhorrent, non-non-binary sea
and I fear that I am not wondering
about how I could actually begin to be free;
I fear waking up. I fear the sunlit smell
of what it tastes like for every sense
of this beautiful, haunted creole-rational mess
to truly be uncompromisingly heard and seen.