5 Poems

Jerking Off to Koh Masaki

Every day I am asked to care about white people,
especially if they’ve been kidnapped or killed overseas
or are experiencing marital problems in New England,
on screens large & small. Any size. I am told
American lives are in danger, American libidos.

In 2042, when white people become the minority,
will the news continue to chirp American lives are in danger
or will we have to specify white & add no, really
& their lives matter, too? But more importantly, will there be
an Asian American other than Lucy Liu that anyone

(not majoring in Asian American studies) cares about?
Pop Quiz: Who was Vincent Chin? Theresa Hak Kyung Cha?
Group Project: Name one book by Maxine Hong Kingston
not titled The Woman Warrior. Final Exam:
Describe two books by an Asian American writer

not named Maxine Hong Kingston. In college I strived
to be an Asian American sex symbol, but got too busy
trying to get a hot white boy to text me back.
One summer, to further the cause, I jerked off
exclusively to Koh Masaki, a Japanese gay porn star.

A big star, with his exquisite scruff, highly
responsive nipples, tireless hips gold & glistening.
But then I felt conflicted, listening to relatives in China
lament the popularity of Japanese cars. They were still
bitterly haunted by Japan’s occupation during WWII.

But Chinese porn wasn’t as good. Low production values,
too much story. & then Koh Masaki died, at 29, from
complications following an appendix operation. A tragically
un-epic way to go. Not a martyr, writer, “real” actor,
no activist, not even Asian American, just someone

who looked like me, if I worked out more than twice a year,
& could make tonguing the hairy sweat from a man’s ass
look like a Hiroshige, & had the marathon heart to fuck
the beautiful brains out of five not as well paid
but also very talented human beings.

Necking

Unnatural, my father says, & his eyes
flee left,
                    right, afraid of going blind
on me: radioactive, space invader me,
virus of desires, my.

But look, I am not alien.
I am earth
& I will stretch
my giraffe neck
to the swaying acacia,
I will bow
to the savanna dust,
the water, I will drink it,
& go
galloping,
eloping with another giraffe-man,
as many do, our necks
will thrash, will
entwine, for each other,
the beginning
of a dance,
see,
with the sun’s
dazzle-face
on.

You should let yourself be more Asian, it’s cute

said my white boyfriend & I felt him
douse me in fresh soy milk & Hello Kitty bows
over the phone. Thing is, I love soy milk,
Hello Kitty. But I also love chocolate chip cookies,
Spongebob. & what I’d told my boyfriend was, sometimes

or a lot of the time, I wish I didn’t have to be Asian,
that it would be easier being white. & he told me You should
let yourself be more Asian, it’s cute. I wondered if he
jerked off to this most-Asian-cutest-version-of-me.
When cute was the last thing I wanted.

I wanted to be hot. But white boys were always
the hot ones. Asians could be cute. To people “into Asians.”
A white friend tried to reassure me: I don’t even see you
as Asian. Which seemed like a lie. Which comforted me
& terrified me, like a hot All-American lie. You’re so

American, she said, as if Asian & American were water
& oil. Soy milk & milk milk. One week I tried out
my boyfriend’s suggestion. I put oyster sauce
on some lettuce: an Asian salad. I put pebbles
in the yard: an Asian garden. I put bok choy

in my hair: an Asian Asian boy. I stir-fried my soul
with ginger. I saw that I must’ve been born
in the heart of a rice cooker. I heard my mother
laughing a rice paddy laugh as I stumbled around,
two or three, naked. Her laughter was warm,

like an invisible set of clothes. Like Ivy League hopes.
I saw that what I’d learned was how to seduce white boys
studying Japanese. I touched them solely with the dark
cuteness of my eyes, the almond shape that helps store
more cuteness, more dark. But I wanted their

whiteness. I thought I could date, fuck into white.
I was willing to settle for eggshell white. But ideally
paper white so I could rewrite, remake myself any way
I liked. I could tell anyone, Be more of that thing I like,
be cute.

Summer Was Forever

Time dripped from the faucet like a magician’s botched trick.
I did not want to applaud it. I stood to one side & thought,
What it’s time for is a garden. Or a factory. What kind of work
do I need to be doing? The faucet wouldn’t tell me.
The faucet wouldn’t shut up. Drip, drop, your life sucks.
Our family did not subscribe to the newspaper, but sometimes
I saw the local paper boy on his route. I was desperately
in love with him, his beanstalk frame & fragile bicycle.
We would be so terribly happy, I knew it. Joy would rhyme
with cardiac arrest. Birds would overthrow the cathedral towers.
I would have a magician’s hair, full of sleeves & saws,
unashamed to tell the whole town our first date was in
an air conditioner factory. How we fell in love during jumps
on his tragic uncle’s trampoline. We fell in love in mid-air.

You     barking starship

You     barking starship     who is gone from me
equally gone from the pine trees     & the sidewalks
you     night train     I never got to know
not for the little of a night
not for the little of a human life
you     Keith Haring     drawing sea angels
angels     I am only meeting today in a gallery
you     I am only now mourning     years later
your hearts & hard-ons     dogs & goddesses     your thirty one years
kill me     you rope     of a line that wrestlewrecks me
to the ground the ground     you
for whom I wish     love
a honeymoon     (somewhere)
as long as the sequoias’