MATT HSU
Writing Myanmar
(I)
Soft yellow rice with peas and garlic and chopped frankfurter, scooped into a banana-leaf bowl, eaten with plastic spoons in the monastery’s back room.
(II)
The streets here are too loud. It’s funny—in Yangon, the 8888 protestors marched down the streets in droves holding cardstock signs. “Free Thanda Khin” and “End Dictatorship” and “We Don’t Accept Military Coups”. Even as the tanks rolled down the road, turrets sniffing the air for dissent, they were organized, compact, flat battle squares. Here, his days are a headache of technicolor signs and perpetual bells.
(III)
The general store he works at gives him a five-minute break every two hours. During this time, he always steps outside and smokes a cigarette. Coughing as the nicotine warms his throat, he stomps footprints into the snow, watching the sunlight bend against the icy crystals. The snow in Yangon was prettier. Sparser, but definitely prettier. In Minneapolis, the sleet holds the sins of every perverted dream. He tosses the cigarette into a nearby bin and walks back into the shop. A rat skitters across the pavement. Cheddar or poison in its teeth, or something like that.
(IV)
He writes poetry by moonlight with ink made from stale wine. This is how the American writers do it. Is it how the Burmese writers do it? He can’t be sure.
(V)
According to the teachings of Theravada, he will one day be reincarnated into a new being. He asks his local priest—a Laotian man with round glasses—what kind of body he’ll inhabit. The priest says he can’t tell, and besides, it doesn’t really matter. It’s Samsara, he says. After his next life ends, a new one will begin, furthering an eternity of life in an eternity of bodies. But to him, it does matter. He wants to become something grand, something that towers over others with beautiful dominion, like a redwood tree or a tiger with sharp fangs. If he becomes a blade of grass, he won’t be pleased.
(VI)
His mom and younger brother still reside in Yangon. He writes to them every other month, but they never respond. Either they’re too tired to reply, or the government’s intercepting his letters. He has no way of knowing.
(VII)
His father’s ashes are mixed with the salt of the Andaman sea. Often he wishes he lived by the coast, so he could catch his spirit in a bottle. Ocean to ocean to ocean.
(VIII)
One day a woman taps his shoulder at a bus stop. “Excuse me,” she says, “do you know where the University of Minnesota is?” She hides her surprise upon seeing his face. Her lipstick is ruby-red. He directs her to a map pasted to a street lamp, and together, they trace the veiny routes, crackling from the central red dot like shattered glass. Route 22 is the correct one, he concludes. She thanks him, but later hops on the wrong line.
(IX)
He double-checks the map. Route 22 for sure.
(X)
His bookshelf is striped with paperbacks, a tattered celebration of his favorite authors. His favorite is Crime and Punishment. In many ways, he sees himself in Raskolnikov; both are nervous, reflective, struggling to get by, fans of fresh sliced bread. But he would never murder anyone, let alone an elderly woman. And besides, how would he even get an axe?
(XI)
Christmas trees plucked free of candy canes. He keeps the spoils in his jacket pocket, sharpening the confections into daggers whenever evil draws near. His fingertips are coated with snowflakes that transfer to customers when he passes them their change. Christmas in Myanmar is celebrated, but it’s not the vibrant, glittering transformation that throws the city into a circuit of split wires. Fluffy wreaths, inflatable Santa Clauses, stands selling eggnog with butternut liquor for fifty cents a cup. No gifts, except for a black fountain pen he finds abandoned on the sidewalk.
(XII)
Electricity bills fall like crow’s feathers at the foot of his bed. He lights wax candles and works with face aflame.
(XIII)
He stops by the local community college and asks the receptionist how much it will cost to take a single course. He’s got his eye on one in particular: Intro to Poetic Forms. Flattening a wad of strawberry gum against her teeth, she consults a plastic binder. “88 dollars,” she tells him. He fishes out his wallet. The contents are: his driver’s license, a wrinkled dollar bill, two pennies, a photograph of his father, business cards for Jamal’s Auto Repair and Shaun Lawrence Hospital, a receipt for a sixteen-ounce can of coca cola, and a smattering of customer loyalty cards that he’s punctured with a toothpick. The pennies slip through a hole in the bottom of the wallet and roll across the tiling. When he bends to pick them up, he finds a quarter beside them.
(XIV)
He has a dilemma. There are several books on creative writing in the back of the library, but they’re in the “MUST REMAIN IN BUILDING” section. The library is open until 8:00 pm, but his shift at the general store doesn’t end until 9:00. He can’t take photographs of the pages because he doesn’t have a camera. Right now, he can only stop by on Sundays, when the store closes early. The words in the books sound made-up, a beautiful, ripe, purple-fog kind of made up. Metaphor. Enjambment. Paradox. Sonnet.
(XV)
Fish paste, potato, carrots, vermicelli noodles, mixed in a wooden bowl, consumed beside a fractured window. A blue mug, half-filled with dreams, half-filled with green tea.
(XVI)
When the head librarian isn’t looking, he slips the writing books beneath his shirt. He looks paunchy; hopefully they’ll think he’s just eaten too much. He hunches his back and slinks over to the entrance. When a young girl pushes the front door open, he begins to run. He feels several pairs of blue eyes tracing his footsteps, but still, he runs. Soon he realizes that nobody’s chasing him, but still, he runs. It isn’t until he arrives back at work, stomach rumbling from the lunch break he’s skipped, that he finally stops running.
(XVII)
The book is large and boxes the bag of overripe bananas off of his kitchen table. He takes notes, partially in Shan, partially in English. He has to read each sentence several times for it to make sense; with each new sweep, the black lines on the page separate, split, fold into words he recognizes. He writes a poem called homemade sour fish tastes better, then crumples it up and throws it into the wastebasket. He places the tip of his pen on a new sheet of paper, and from it, a jungle blooms.
(XVIII)
His knees ache from hauling boxes of grapefruit into the store. The orange skin is covered in diamonds. When he pauses to take a sip of water, he accidentally knocks a collection of grapefruits to the ground. His manager, a brusque white woman with tight hair, yells as he scrambles to pick up the lost fruit. One he has to fish out from beneath a refrigerator. It is covered with black grime. After his manager goes to scold a girl who cracked an egg while bagging groceries, he slips the grapefruit in his pocket. He later colors the blemishes with a burnt sharpie and writes grapefruit on the outside. He pauses, then edits it. [grape][fruit]. He edits it again. [gr][ape][fruit].
(XIX)
Fourteen pink candles on his birthday cake. Each counts for two years.
(XX)
He fishes his first poem from the wastebasket. It’s covered in lint, but he can still read the lines that curl and hang like ivy over concrete. He flattens the poem with his elbow, then places it amongst the rest of the poems in a shoebox beneath the sink. He takes out another scrap of paper. His stomach is rumbling, and the only thing left to do is write some more.
Matt Hsu is a student from San Francisco, California. His work has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize, and he’s published or forthcoming in The B’K, Kissing Dynamite Poetry, Sine Theta Magazine, and Paddler Press. Currently he’s querying his first novel: a twisty, thriller-mystery about a crafty assassin. You can find him on Twitter at @MattHsu19 or at his personal website matthsu156538437.wordpress.com.