test (the only one)

did you exist in the past

—yes—
[] have had having
(had &) when
the body has material

wants mother matter;
having (had) lets me be
when [] did not

are you

—[] i ?—
pitch information canceled just i()
absolution through nothing & nothing
through finality()
such self-important words:

(someone really really wants
to cut a hole in no/
you/not/you/yes you
& fuck you through it,
buddy)

((the theoretical
you does not really exist: it is
i while i/am am
not()))

so what to call you

—don’t ask me—

({[language bodies [body] labor}
bodies [(my) body] labors
(their/your) [language] bodies
i/ i that is mine/ body/ {[my body]
girls through [labor] mans through
[language]} mans me into girlhood/
{[notmanhood] bodies itself
by [bodies] not mine} but mine to labor
with body / [body with] labor languages
as [girl] labors as [body] bodies me])

why many meanings

—singular []: all lies reality
does not one (v.) will not
one existence is dictated
through multiplicity of one
of one & another one of
falseness of one for
example i am not a—
girl i am never a
girl i breathe several
girls oneness performs
wholeness only to take
off backstage a whole
made through holes {[not
one] i} connotes a [i/] lie:

yes?

[i {a body {[wants] (:) a body}
once [a body] worn} an {[i] a body (:)
wants (:) {[my body]} (:) once your [body]
(:) once [your want]} (:) my body not
[a body] worn its {[want] in body once
your body now my [body] bodied [self]}
a body worn in wants:]

so girl could i paint you

“i” is ocean / blindfolded edge

a nothing here, so absolute it’s like waves, automated
-collapsing-gone-backagain-repeat, so quite mother’s

image, so second-long like hurt’s amnesias, eyes

no more but silk-cradled flesh, shore for perpetual no
-light waves², gently still, violently unmoving, etcetera…
hungerpathetic, crawling bloody kneecaps, image stares

me down as i sustain it, chasing some vision ghost in denial
’s face, but oh, cruel mistress! nothing for me to see but waiting

’s empty blackness, taking not-there with all my openings, space
-carving, -reserving for the nonspacious, a game, really—
or no? no! (& right here this momentary petulance,

my thoughts, surprises even me, for i know the game, love
the game, psychoanalyst jerkoff of it all…) see quickly that it is

an exercise³ in objecthood⁴—think art, think frame, think your skin
cells peel-prone paint—girl in frame with eyes that don’t function,
brushstrokes uneyeing, unseeing, yet seen, seen!, i am beyond

delight¹ every time

________________________________

¹ toward it: drifting, me, fingerless, and for a liquid now, thoughtless—then a gloved hand slaps my behind;

² i feel my body. the air thins out, slides out from my canal, post-coital flaccidness, or: i thin out, more than ear, now earlobe too, the skin on it, redistribution. touch gets me all like this. machination, orchestration, of some semblance of balance. touch me all over, i cannot speak, but am begging, my nerves are—piloerections a tease: spelled-out want. [              ] knows it, her friends know it, are crueler for it—but that is the game, the affixing of language to body, isn’t it, meaning-derivation: stage rendered performance-site, by audience-presence alone, how objects must exist in—through—implications, as symbols, & i, semi-consciously, not reluctantly… ah, to mean something bigger/ other/ greater… and i do! laid fuckedout-but-unfucked-wanting on this table, unseeing gagged restrained, if i am to voyeurpose myself i have become something bigger/ other/ greater than just a body (though aren’t we/all always), “nature” (its absence) sexreduced into object—but reduction is tangible action which comes with meaningbaggage which constitutes or justifies the semiotic “more” in/ of image—all this is sensual. and then, gone

³ is teasing: now, sex, for let’s call it sex, for it is sex—i am fucked. fucking is filmic physicality, being fucked moreso—rerouting it in language i will not, cannot, cut its simple, common hedge into symbolicsense maze, especially fucked out i am no suiting architect—but this is no conscious defiance of metaphor; we cannot defy metaphor, for metaphor is done to us; ganymedesquely image, anything filmic, with filmic potential—the real and its un-/re-configuration—is wrestle-carried off to shoulder symbol—it’s forceful! to a degree as violating as the ascription of sense and sensemaking to genitalia, attribution of role and purpose to flesh, the “making-real” of it, of them, the contriving of hetero-sexual difference under and around which role and purpose, or really, “role” and “purpose”, self-perpetuates, and is perpetuated—hereby we [ ; ; ; …] are caged, the “natural” and crude is made symbolic in erect cage, the erect cage naturally naturalized, mankind the demarcative architect of “    ” and “    ”, both, without their own right, zeusesque engineers of symbolprocess… machinations of the flesh are already wired to metaphorize; sex itself is symbol enough. to reach sex through symbol seems, to me, a tad too much, the grotesque of too-high too-layered weddingcakes, though i’m not one to deny the erotic in drumming-insistent implications of/ through the symbolic… but can we not proceed with image in its rawest form? to whichever extent it does have a rawest form? does it have a rawest
form?

⁴ i cannot quite think—

---

t.r. san is a poet and translator loosely based in Yangon, with recent work found in The Cincinnati Review, HAD, Smokelong Quarterly, The Offing, &c. Read & reach @thoushallkill on Twitter.