"Downward Spiral", Kok Wei Liang
CW: Bestiality
Out for a fuck
With a duck
Bad luck on the corkscrew cock
Author’s Note: This thanbauk would not have been possible without the kind editorial assistance of Don Shiau.
/ Kok Wei Liang committed prose as a child, perpetrated stand up as an adult, met a few slam poets along the way, and began combining all three. He dropped out of law school in his 20s to save his life, and disappoint his parents.
/ COMMENTARY
“How could I have predicted the responses to my two introductions of genuine Southeast Asian poetic forms: the Gurindam Prompt, based on 200-year-old moralistic Malay couplets, and the Thanbauk Prompt, exploring a versatile but oddly brief Burmese verse structure? Kok Wei Liang’s “Downward Spiral” not only precisely compressed wit and sexual humour into the precise rhyme form of the thanbauk — he actually inspired others to respond with further thanbauk, which pleased both me and my Burmese poet friends immensely.”