Jason Wee (b. 1979)
SELECTED POEMS
The first time, the person I worked on the manu-
scripts with left me with outlines and promises
to the authors. His leaving was slow, like a roommate
who first takes a sip of your almond milk, the
crust of your sandwiches, nothing you would notice,
before taking a charging cable, an old dictionary,
a chair, before disappearing with everything.
The slowness of it feel like a greater betrayal, like
a taunt to find him out and stop him.Now I am about to send the first layouts to the
printers. This isn't a child as much as an emissary
from my island. I am sending out a declaration
of independence. There may be no one else here
to count on, but it's my place. I don't own the
mountain or the sand, but I'll cut loose the coral
stems holding this land-buoy in place if I have to,
and set the engines ablaze.More than two thousand publications are awaiting
scrutiny before they can be distributed and sold.
I should say more than two thousand Chinese
books. Last October they banned eight hundred, but
changed their minds this new year. The books were
mostly on science, medicine, mathematics, religion,
archeology and similar subjects. The Controller
assured us only one-tenth of scrutinized books were
fully censored, but where does the time go? The time
withdrawn from circulation, however temporarily.
The time spent submitting our books for scrutiny,
and after months of delay, the time spent inquiring
after books held up. The time our gestating books no
longer have. Better I continue, writing like this, in
this language.I was preparing for a test, an exam of some
consequence, it requires prep, some study that
I could complete only if I don't spend time on
anything else. You were with me, you wanted me to
go attend a discussion with you. Because it's you
I agreed. We were there, a sand-colored room, eyeing
the discussion and the clock, staying till twenty
mins before my exam begins. I snort-laughed in the
way you hated but you were out of view, I speed read
what I could in fifteen min before rushing to the
exam hall. You rushed along with me, telling me
it'll be fine, I'm smart. I've hated my test anxieties
for so long; I pulled myself out of the dream.Second sleep. Dreamt of a bathroom, urinals
not in a line against a wall but freestanding like
sculptures with a small flappable modesty partition
companionably next to each. Too close to each
other, as though they were all chatting together
before I stepped in. This bathroom felt familiar,
like I've been here before, or a bathroom like it.[…]
Puvi says its translation must ask 'unacceptable
to whom?' Consider virumpathahatha for its give,
the acknowledgment of a cane bending away from
punished skin. Ertu kolla mudiyatha may also be
considered, an ironback carapace resonant as a small
conch of echoes or a solo supreme. The Mandarin
journos write it as a question of popularity or of
hospitality - a welcome to strangers now withdrawn.
Those Hokkien and Teochew describe chao, a stink
to retch out decency, while the Kuala Lumpur
lawyers translates it as tidak dingini; the Malay root
ingin and the Sanskrit iccha sharing a sense of a
craving, for now, yet itself undesirable. Puvi says we
can decide between the forceful and the finite, and if
I never stop wanting? I fill up with oats and thinned
milk, better yet put my teeth to my nearest and eat
my own.
by Jason Wee
excerpted from From A (Undesirable ) Diary (2023)
