though you have never met this woman, you know
all about her. she is brilliant, beautiful, delicate, tempestuous. she sounds
like the romantic interest in an indie film
about a disenfranchised white guy. you listen
to every detail. you nod, you reflect. you gleam with empathy.
with understanding. he likes to fuck you
roughly, up the ass, after he talks. sometimes
you bleed into the toilet after. you barely make a sound.
a part of you is proud of this. you think that
this is being good. you think that this is strength.
if i asked you what you wanted
you would not say a word. the truth is trapped inside you, like
light inside a prism. you are always disappearing
in the hope of being seen. you are always shrinking
to fit into someone else’s arms. you are collapsing ever
inward, a galaxy trying to become smaller.
when i put my ear to your chest, i hear the humming
of a barely audible frequency beaming itself past the clouds
into the atmosphere, through the distant reaches of space. infinite
and unstoppable. magnificent. love me for my anger, it whispers.
love me for my need. love me for my jealousy, my weakness, my greed.
my cruelty, my viciousness, my vanity, my shame. love me for my ugliness.
love me when i scream.
the lady in the moon
for years, i would only have sex
in places where i could see the sky
forests shot through with wet starlight falling
between cedar branches, silky beaches
beneath a swollen sunrise; swimming pools, enveloped
in the scent of chlorine. i lost count
of how many times i lost my virginity (when you’re
a queer fourteen-year-old, you have a lot
to lose), lost count
of how many tongues i tasted, hips
i clutched, cocks i choked on. lost count of how many white boy faces
i searched for my reflection in, how many white boy
hands i allowed inside me as i writhed, pretending
to orgasm
ignoring the pain
as i stared at the unforgiving heavens, searching
for a map of my body in the stars
my yun-yun told me once
that there is a lady who lives on the moon
a woman who dared to steal the food of the gods
magical peaches that could transform mortal flesh
into the divine. as punishment
for her audacity, the gods barred her from paradise,
condemned her to live alone on the moon, forever circling
between the heaven she dreamed
of and the home she left behind.
and this is why the moon always seems so lonely, why
the touch of moonlight always feels like tears
moonlight left its yellow stain on my skin, left me hungry with the ghosts
of Old China in my belly, hollow places
in my body where pleasure should have been.
when you’re a fourteen-year-old asian queer desperate
for love, you might not know how much you have left to lose
you might think you’ve lost it all already.
you might gamble away your virginity,
dignity
safety,
consent
just for the privilege of sucking off some white boy
just for the privilege of watching your own reflection twist and gasp in pain
in eyes the colour of heaven
as he rams himself into you without asking first splits you open breaks you in
two.
you might believe that if only, if only enough white boys
make (a mockery of) love to you, you might finally be beautiful enough
to enjoy it deserve pleasure find heaven
it took a rainy night date with a in a dilapidated basement
with a man whose skin
was the colour of moonless nights to understand: heaven
isn’t in the skies. it isn’t in the eyes
of men who tell you that Asians are beautiful and then
refuse to put on a rubber it isn’t in the hands
that push you down hold you there as you search unsuccessfully
for the word stop. it’s a place you come close to
when he kisses you softly says, may i each time
he touches something new, as though discovering
the letters of a sacred language in every pore
when all the empty places you’ve been hiding
deep inside your chest in your stomach throat between your thighs
begin to whisper, you’ve found it, you’ve found it, i’m coming
we’re here
i’ll have sex pretty much anywhere, these days
inside
outside
in bedrooms
on tables
in cars
in daylight or
in the dark. the question isn’t where, it’s who.
who is willing to make love with me
out of colours without names bodies without borders words without
tongues
who will make love with me so that i never need
to pretend again so that my skin trembles
ripples with the force of our heat
so that my shadow throws its head back
and screams to the disbelieving moon
there is no need for silence there is no need for shame
your body is a map of the divine
when is a woman?
And ain’t I a woman? I have borne thirteen children, and seen them most all sold off to slavery, and when I cried out with my mother’s grief, none but Jesus heard me! And ain’t I a woman?
—Sojourner Truth
dear mama,
you said you wanted to know
what it is i am learning in this university
upon which you have spent so much blood, sweat,
and money (we must not forget money, never
forget money, of course, mama)
so i could get a good job
and earn a respectable living
and find a decent wife
and raise two or three healthyhappychildren
and take care of you in your old age
you said you wanted to know, ah-ma,
well:
today, in my fem-in-izz-em class,
a white lady asked
what is a woman
and another white lady
said does the transsexual
threaten the woman
to which the first replied
but what is the woman
and the second said
not a man
and she looked at me
mama, when is a woman?
did you become one
when you were born and pronounced a girl,
stolen by a white man doctor from
your mother’s red-stained yellow cunt,
as though stealing a pearl from the darkest Orient,
staring between your infant legs,
is that when you became a woman?
was it when the blood first gushed,
thick,
like a river from the old land,
babbling like the ghosts of the henghaa
from inside you?
or was it when you
married baba,
when your belly grew round and scarred
as the moon,
when jeje, then me, then moimoi split
you in two
on our way to the world,
is it being broken,
smashed like the tide
swallowed like the moon
plowed and sown like a rice field
t
hat makes a woman?
what hands of what clock
hold the secret of you?
and were you a woman any less, mama
when you raged against
your time?
working waitress night shifts while struggling at school,
when your feet blistered and your
joints ached,
did work steal any femininity from you,
did anger, did jealousy, did serving
your white schoolmates at restaurant tables you couldn’t
afford to sit at,
were you any less a woman then?
when your face wrinkled,
when your breasts sagged, heavy with milk
(a bitter and hopeful taste, i still remember)
what was your gender, ah-ma?
and mother, was i, your son
destined to boyhood, to be your
jook-sing zhai by the light of the stars
that led our ancestors here,
was i a woman when
at four, i crept into your bedroom
to try on your plastic pearls,
roam in the closet forest of your dresses
was i a woman when
i begged to be dressed like my sisters,
to be rid of my penis,
to dance ballet,
to sing,
to be loved,
when i begged you to love me,
what was i then, ah-ma?
was i a girl when
you taught me respect for women’s minds,
for the battles you fought in medical school,
what was i when you shrieked and screamed and threatened and wailed
for one missed word on a spelling test
THINK OF YOUR FUTURE
HOW CAN YOU BE SO UNGRATEFUL
AFTER ALL I’VE DONE FOR YOU
is it sacrifice that makes a mother
is it suffering that makes a woman
is it sacrifice
suffering
sacrifice
suffering?
ah-ma, the cold stars of the northern skies
are my witness,
i was girl, a virgin, when
at thirteen years old
i first dreamed of loving a man
and awoke, drenched in salt, sticky with heat,
mother,
the night can testify
i was a woman in the arms
of men who grabbed,
struck
stole
tore
the sun moon stars can tell you
i was a woman, washed in dew
the morning after
wasn’t i a woman ma
the nights they chased me
the nights they spat at me
the nights they called me an animal
animal animalanimal
wasn’t i a woman
when they said i wasn’t fit to do work for them
wasn’t i a woman
when they said the only work for me
was selling my body
and even that
would fetch a low price (we must not
forget money, never forget money, of course, mama)
wasn’t i a woman then?
wasn’t it woman’s blood i bled?
i bled
we bled
mama,
can you tell me,
when am i
a woman?
love,
your son
the funny thing about violence: six meditations on a theme
i.
father likes to tell me
all about moving to canada from china
in the 1950s. things weren’t so
easy for orientals back then
for one thing, there was racism.
the other kids used to sing the ”chink song” every recess,
my father says, and one, a little bastard
named Tommy liked to throw rocks and say, ”go home, chinks.”
my father solved this problem
by tackling Tommy and beating his head against the playground asphalt.
i ask my father if this experience has made him bitter
about white people. my father
looks surprised. they weren’t white, he tells me.
my father and his brothers had been put
in the separate class for First Nations children.
ii.
one day after sixth grade band practice
christopher hurled my rental clarinet to the ground, sneering
whatcha gonna do, faggot?
i heard the instrument’s wooden throat
cracking
a hundred delicate metal keys
make shattering songs like breaking bone.
i took a deep breath and counted to five
to collect myself
and punched christopher with all my strength
right in his goddamn stomach.
christopher
had only one kidney, it turned out,
and spent a night in the hospital. i
was suspended from school.
the moral of the story is:
if you’re going to be an elementary school faggot,
protect your delicate instruments.
if you’re going to be a homophobe, protect
your delicate organs.
iii.
grandmother kept chickens
in her backyard in Victoria, BC
a practice of dubious legality at the time, but
who was going to bother a little old chinese lady
about a few chickens?
she made me watch her kill them
when i was small: the swift, decapitating chop,
the scarlet swirling down the drain,
the scent of freshly dying bowels,
to better appreciate the feast that followed.
i thought she was so beautiful, like
an ancient chinese goddess of carnage and grace.
when i grew up, i wanted to kill chickens
just like that.
looking down at the sterile plastic packages
of the grocery store, i am forced to wonder
whatever happened to that child?
what happened to my childhood’s ferocious appetite,
my childhood’s killer heart?
iv.
my camp counselor got me drunk on a single beer,
a granville island honey brown.
i was so ecstatic, kissing him,
after an adolescence spent feelingly ugly,
and wondering what kissing a boy
might feel like. so ecstatic
that i wasn’t bothered by the scars
that crawled like puffy white caterpillars
across his wrists. oh, these?
these are from when i tried to kill myself
after breaking my girlfriend’s ribs
v.
a funny thing happened on the way home
from the theatre the other night.
some friends and i
all delicately fabulous queers
were confronted by this random jock type, a big white guy.
he passed us by, then circled back around
a kind of crazy angry joy
in his eyes. no warning, no words
he hauls off and hits my friend.
so she stabs him. red blood red blood red blood
falls and mixes with the rain.
when the police arrive,
they beat my friend to the ground and cuff her.
we are told that if we move, we will also be beaten.
they keep us an hour for questioning.
the jock type is long gone.
v.
violence is pretty a funny thing
isn’t it?
go ahead and laugh.
laugh.
stealing fire
for Parker
O rising moon,
You
came to me
Said I could be anything
O shining moon
Open your arms
Let us into your circle
they tried to teach us to be afraid to be beautiful,
stained the fear-soaked streets with the blood
of our strange sisters/weird siblings/our brothers grim & gay
if a tree falls in the woods and no one hears it
does it make a sound?
if a boy wearing a dress is attacked in the night
does anyone hear about it?
does anybody listen?
does anybody do a goddamned thing?
they wanted to teach us to be less than our desire,
taught us to desire less,
to forego instead of become
Signifying moon
Trickster Queen,
Were you lying to me?
Prophesying moon
Keep your promise
Keep your promise
Keep us
Alive
we came to know beauty as a dangerous thing,
it was beauty that got us beaten on the playground,
by our parents, our teachers, by friends,
moths to flame, it’s a tale old as time and injustice,
sometimes freedom burns
more brightly than self-preservation; and so we
flirted with fire, stole moments alone with the mirror,
pilfered jewelry & lipstick & gowns
hearts pounding as fumbled to paint our faces with clumsy hands,
to decrypt the secrets of “femme,”
to de-crypt: to bring forth from the tomb,
to revive
to return to life,
to transform,
to make real,
to be born,
to become,
to shimmer,
to shine,
we dared ourselves to face the night,
put on heels high as ecstasy and danced to shame heaven,
knowing the risk & loving it
a man told me once,
i’d like to wear heels in public,
but i’d also like to live
sometimes it’s important to be alive than to live
O rising moon
You lied to me
Said I could be anything
I wanted to be
O lying moon
We died for you
strange sibling, moon-sister,
kindred changeling midnight child,
your beauty is a gasoline rainbow under starlight,
A Place Called No Homeland Page 4