Victoria Chan
Away in Washington, I See the Capitol and Think of You
Because the Capitol looks as white
as the Zulily dress you’ve never worn.
Grease doesn’t sit well on white.
You, the cast-iron dome imitating marble,
sat astride the muggy kitchen, and grease.
Always grease. Every kitchen you inhabit
is a stainless steel kitchen imitating marble—
Mothers are always dreaming of a future
home. I am always dreaming of you.
How beautiful you’d look posed in front.
Perhaps you’d wear the white dress, pose,
arms distended to hereness like lonely
fingers. The same pose, front and center
at the restaurant you first bought. Its sign
a reversal of the golden arches. This, too,
another landmark of layers. Crumbling asphalt
blanketing nighthawks and primary colors.
American Dream. It’s monochrome minimalism.
You wouldn’t wear white, harbinger of death.
Every American city is the same city and away
in Washington, away from the fried county lines
and molten peaches of Georgia, outlines of you
exist in every tourist. I cut their faces out
like a sorry scrapbook. I bring the capitol
to the middle ground. I cradle your face
like a lump of meat in a wonton wrapper.
The capitol looks whiter and lonelier up close.
On Explaining Asexuality
for the fifth time, I start to feel like I’m losing
it. (And no, I’m not talking about virginity.)
My mother believes I’m losing it, the way her eyes
glimmer with hope the last time I brought a boy home.
My friends think I’m losing it, the way they try to pull
me out of the waters I’m bathing in. My desert rose
knows I’m losing it, the way it furls its glossy leaves
and never flowers.
Her voice a murmur, the thrum,
the hum she imagines I never feel—
It must be something akin to godliness,
Rachel tells me in awe. Splayed
on the discount air mattress I laughed,
said yes
yes
like it was my first time learning the shape
of it in my mouth. I conflate lack of sexuality
with narcissism and imagine
her epiphany is closer to any answer I’ve given before.
Godliness is a loneliness I am learning to walk through.
How can I say I want I want I want without
a wasteland trailing behind me? I tell everyone
what I lack is not what I’m missing.
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