prawn star
By kevin martens wong zhi qiang
originally published saturday, 22 april 2023
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.
I'd be the first too, I'm sure;
a gay gragok whose body would be such a cure
for that affliction they call image, and self-censure.
How would you still perform either, when your own GP teacher
keeps such an open mind? Eli sertu nteh kabesa
di kambrang; no, his head is made of star-stuff far more refined.
The early reviews all say that it is all just nature
that makes the carapace of his mind so refined, so tinctured;
I think it was someone famous who once said that the best kind of poem really paints an extremely vivid
picture.
And this, too, is true: my most pronounced feature
is certainly my heart, so rich and full of grandeur,
so thick, and juicy, and trauma-baked until just nicely tender
enough to not start its own OnlyFans. Someone else wanted to accuse us once, twice and many times of having
an agenda—
but darling, sayang, really, in the end,
it's actually more a kind of sweet, blissful, chocolately
leisure.
After all, it's you yourself who implied it:
isti dos-dos kambrang sa kabesa.