A matryoshka doll: a Chinese box, a Spanish onion
of closets
(((((((my wardrobe, a closet)
my name, a closet)
my street, a closet)
my town, a closet)
my district, a closet)
my state, a closet)
my country, a closet)
my code, postal; my system, postal; my office, post; my Service, Colonial; my colonialism, post ––
posture.
My road, Station Road, Abbey Road, an imperial lifeline ––
from South Britain to Gibraltar, from Malta to Alexandria, from Port Said to the Suez, from Aden to Muscat, …
–– my road a spaghetti junction of traffic-king among an English colonel’s postal codes; my streets, High Street, Oxford Street, the three-way inter-Section of 377A, 377B (‘carnal intercourse against the order of nature’) and 377D (‘gross indecency’) of the British colonial penal code, my streets a Y junction of interchange-ability (Penal Code of
- Bangladesh, 2. Myanmar, 3. Pakistan, 4. Sri Lanka, …)
and intersectionality in a matrix of binaries:
(women/men South/North on/off girls/boys
East/West left/right ladies/gentlemen Orient/Occident
false/true homosexual/heterosexual proletariat/bourgeoisie either/or
settler/native colonised/coloniser black/white 0/1)
dead/alive. The British Empire, English empyrean, the Transport for London (TfL) of Royal Mail Ships (RMS) and Imperial Airways, setting of steamship routes, electrical telegraphs and railway tracks; the sun never setting, always rising post meridiem (p.m.), the IKEA of KLEPPSTAD closets, coffins and sarcophagi, wake of skeletons in my closet and my wardrobe in the coffin. IKEA PAX wardrobes: closets the size of caskets, of a churchyard, albescent Albion country and city of the overhead albatross, white Sepulchres of Dover and Greater London Babylon; Rule, Britannia! Rule the waves, Pax Britannica, rule the graves, flat-pack coffins the size of an Empire (GB), of nation-states, republics of letters (ABC) and epistolary democracies, chromosomal (XY) kingdoms and monarchies of DNA (ACGT):
- Jamaica (JM), 4. Nigeria (NG), 7. Ghana (GH), 10. Brunei (BN),
- Kenya (KE), 5. The Gambia (GM), 8. Guyana (GY), 11. Malaysia (MY), …
- Uganda (UG), 6. Zambia (ZM), 9. Kiribati (KI),
MY: my Malaysia, my Malaya, semi-colonial, semicolon setting off an independent clause along the All-Red Route and Line ––
from Mumbai (Bombay) to Chennai (Madras), from Penang to Singapore, from Port Darwin to Alice Springs, from Adelaide to Sydney, …
–– and giving rise, Arise ye Wretched of the Earth! To the independence cause?
Malaysia: negaraku, ‘my country,’ merdeka, ‘independence’?
Contrary.
My post-colonialism?
Postured: my decolonisation, postponed; my stamp, postage (RM0.60, apiece); my restante, poste; my rest, in peace; my ante, increased; my gender, policed; my Lesbos, Greece; my prolactin, released; my Indies, East; my androgens decreased; my Asia, Southeast; my femme fatale, unleashed; my MapleStory, SEA; my deadname, deceased; my resistance, not least; my existence, utmost; my mortem, post-; my Malaysia, Pos, my funerary box, P.O. and my S (Seberang), P (Perai) –
my S. (script), P. (post-) mailing address: closet,
closet,
closet,
14100 closet,
closet,
closet.
