DOROTHY CHAN
Triple Sonnet for Silver Foxes, Dear Dad, and Alex Trebek,
Teach Me Something Actually Useful
Because I've inherited my mother's face,
I worry I've inherited her taste in men,
and why did I play Lolita in my twenties,
tugging at the heartstrings of silver foxes
whose wives left them the weekend before,
and don't you dare ask me how a woman plays
Lolita at twenty-two, because this is power,
baby, lollipop in my mouth, red lips and even
redder cheeks, eye fucking silver foxes straight
out of Carrie Bradshaw's date-of-the-week-
politician-style-fantasy on Sex and the City,
silver foxes who bought me whiskey sours
and Mai Tais, because every girl goes through
a sweet drinks phase in college,
and I'd like an Amaretto Sour with Luxardo
cherries now, and take a shot with me,
I don't have daddy issues, but Dear Dad,
I'll never forgive you for dating Mom when
she turned eighteen, when you were a grown-
ass-thirty-two-year-old man who should've
known better, and What is Ephebophilia?
should really be a question, no, a category
on Jeopardy, and Alex, I'll take that for $1000,
because I'm an expert for life, and I've never
watched your show, because know-it-all white
boys flaunting useless information is a turnoff.
Alex, teach me something useful, like how to
make sense of my mother's and father's history
in Hong Kong, and I want to punch my own
father in the face, in 2019, when he proudly says
he dated my mother because he needed someone
to take care of his two boys, as if the sole purpose
of women on earth is to nurse men, as if
the sole purpose of women on earth is to
cook your favorite soups and scrub the floors
until you can see your own damn reflection,
and Alex Trebek, What is Ephebophilia?
I don't trust you to teach me something
actually useful. And sometimes, I wish
I built a time machine to stop my mother
from signing on to a life with my father,
but where would that leave me, where would it.
Triple Sonnet for Couples Fighting Over Yale
On Riverdale, Betty and Jughead fight
over Yale, and I couldn't care less
about their first world problem, but
I remember the much older partner
with his gray buzzed head guilting me
because Cornell's my alma mater.
And when will men stop attacking
women's achievements, I wonder,
as he's rambling about "fancy schools"
and hard work "not being worth it,"
because "Where's the fun in that?"
and this is one week after his beard
scratched my vulva in a hotel room
in Tallahassee. This is one week
after his grand gesture of flying cross
country, booking a cheap hotel room
to see me, sex me, bring me stale
waffles in the morning with no syrup.
This is one week after I screamed STOP
in the middle of sex. He says I am not
open enough. He says "introverted"
like it's sin—that I "talk a big talk"
about sex but do not deliver what
I promise, that I will cheat soon, after
meeting up with an old friend for drinks,
that I am too ambitious, that I do not make
any time for him, that I need to learn how
to cook better, to fly out to Phoenix
for his forty-second birthday. What is this,
you stupid old man, I want to say—
you stupid old man who can't keep it
in his pants, you stupid old man who
preyed on me when you should've been
working, who dragged me out to a five-
hour brunch when I was too polite to say
no. That wasn't a meet cute. This isn't love.
This isn't a love sonnet. I do not exist
just to speak sweet nothings to you in cars.
No, I don't just live to work, but have you
ever heard of kid of immigrant struggle?
My parents were dirt poor growing up.
Shut up, old man. Now hang up the phone.
Triple Sonnet for Snakes Eating Cocks
Do cocks and snakes get along, I wonder,
when I know the answer is yes, yes, and more
yes, when my lover and I get in trouble
for kissing at the bar, and I want to tell you
I'm scared this is going to be a love story.
This is a love story, where we see each other
once a year, and the waiter interrupts us to
"Keep it PG," but since when is living about
keeping your tongue out of the subject of your
affection's mouth? Since when is living not
about taking that gulp of bourbon, spilling it
on your breast? Since when is living not about
following luck and intuition and ambition,
and Hello, Fortune. Hello, Boy. Did you know
snakes and cocks are a match of complements,
and yes, we kiss for hours. We talk for days.
Explaining the Chinese Zodiac to you is like
explaining my childhood to a lover, the way
I grew up in the Pennsylvania suburbs, eating
hotpot with my parents—make it extra spicy:
add in bok choy and enoki and fish balls and scallops
and prawns with their heads intact, and beef balls
for the dog, and Hello, Boy, I'm like Christmas
morning to you, the seduction of the zodiac—
you wrap your leg around mine, and I love
the way you smell, and right now, you need
to know that a Snake Woman will always get
what she wants, swallow you whole. And Dear
Rooster, Dear Cock, Dear Boy, run away now
if you can't handle it—if you can't handle me,
because being with a snake woman is like
being trapped in a glass cage with no way out.
And Christmas morning for me, growing up,
was visiting Chinatown with my Rabbit
Mother and Tiger Father, buying egg tarts,
buying red envelopes, buying coconut mochi,
buying fortune telling books for the year ahead,
and did you know that people born under
the Year of the Rooster are destined to either
be great writers or ordinary human beings?
So, which one are you? Which one will you be
for me? I think we could be beautiful—I think.
Ode to Lasagna
A friend tells me his favorite word is "lasagna,"
and all I can think about is my favorite word, "sashimi,"
and yes, it's near lunch time, but there's something
about the s that gets me every time, and I love
toro and unagi and mackerel and salmon roe—
give me that tingling in my mouth once the roe ball's
popped—sashimi, the rise and fall, the serpentine
motion of s—sa, how sexy is my chirashi, like the hot
older sister of sashimi, partying it up in the club,
a little nip slip out of the tight-white-crop-top-cami
that reads, "I will destroy you," serving me steam—
sex, a little vodka mixed with pineapple and seltzer,
and now, give me serpentine like Ingres' La Grand Odalisque,
and how gorgeous is she—the butt, the peacock
feathers brushing, and when I think serpentine,
I also think contrapposto, and how the right man
pulls off contrapposto and the right woman pulls off serpentine,
and back to the Odalisque, just look at her back
that keeps curving, keeps curving, her face that does more
than launch a thousand ships—it dares you to join her
in this oil on canvas, and she's telling you,
"Will you use these peacock feathers to brush up
against my leg—my thigh, tickle me and tease,
give me something a little bit more, tonight
behind this curtain." And I guess "lasagna" isn't that bad
of a word, but really, it's no "sashimi" that rolls
off the tongue—slippery when wet, slippery always for you,
and when I hear "lasagna," I think of Garfield
chowing down on his favorite entrée like there's no tomorrow
in the middle of the Sunday Funnies, and of course,
Garfield's babe of a girlfriend, Arlene of the long neck,
the pink fur, her lips that opened into her gapped-tooth-
supermodel-of-the-cartoon-world-smile, and once,
at a bar, my best friend pointed out that a boy stood
closer to me just because I was wearing pink,
and does that make all of us softies at heart? Give me
steam, give me sex, give me serpentine, and say something
to me so I won't stop staring at your lips.
Triple Sonnet for Asian Girlfriends: Cancel My Membership
The Asian Girlfriends of White Guys Club
is a membership I never want to renew,
so cancel my card—I need space in my Juicy
Couture wallet, and according to dating sites,
girls who look like me get the most action,
but what else is new when some dude's grand-
dad regaled him with tales that Asian girls
are more fuckable with their tight pussies,
the sideways-vagina-Holy-Grail-of-breakfast-
specials, and old men, stop with your war stories,
get away from my tight ass pussy—let me protect
her with the world's finest lingerie, and I pose
in front of the mirror, snapping photos the way
painters used to eye fuck their muses, but I'm
my own damn muse, thank you very much,
and I crave seduction, remembering how
I played Aphrodite in an elementary school
play—how I bemoaned that role, because
What's up with the Goddess of Love and Ares?
Who would be attracted to war, to rage, to incest,
and why does every girl end up with either angry
guy Ares or ugly guy Hephaestus when she's
the prize herself, and Vanna White, let me spin
the wheel again, or whatever game show it is
when I can choose another door, and where's
my golden Dalmatian or my endless supply
of cotton candy ice cream or my vacation to
Tokyo, and you bet your ass, I'm taking a friend,
not a lover, because what is love—and you've
hurt me once more. And you've hurt me once
more. No, I don't want ni hao. I don't want
masculine hands on my thigh. I don't want
a masculine hand holding my hand. A ten inch
height difference is only cute for a month.
After that, my neck hurts trying to hug you.
I don't want a spork when we're eating dim
sum. I don't want iced water when we're eating
dim sum. Get your hands off my char siu bao.
Like, are you actually cute or are western dating
standards telling me you're the ideal man—
the Adonis to my Asian Aphrodite, and wait,
I've got the myth wrong. But who really cares.
Dorothy Chan is the author of Chinese Girl Strikes Back (Spork Press, forthcoming 2021), Revenge of the Asian Woman (Diode Editions, 2019), Attack of the Fifty-Foot Centerfold (Spork Press, 2018), and the chapbook Chinatown Sonnets (New Delta Review, 2017). She is a two-time Ruth Lilly and Dorothy Sargent Rosenberg Poetry Fellowship finalist, a 2020 finalist for the Lambda Literary Award in Bisexual Poetry for Revenge of the Asian Woman, and a 2019 recipient of the Philip Freund Prize in Creative Writing from Cornell University. Her work has appeared in POETRY, The American Poetry Review, Academy of American Poets, and elsewhere. Chan is an Assistant Professor of English at the University of Wisconsin-Eau Claire, Poetry Editor of Hobart, Book Reviews Co-Editor of Pleiades, and Founding Editor and Editor in Chief of Honey Literary. Visit her website at dorothypoetry.com