I have a problem: I don’t feel sexy when I shave and I don’t feel sexy when I don’t. Sometimes, I shave anyway so I can look at myself better, feel how smooth I am to touch. Most of the time, I don’t. Don’t want a full bush, a gorgeous woman on reality TV once told me, or else men get lost down there. (I’m queer, but that’s beside the point.) I do, I said to the TV screen, wishing she’d get it. I like feeling feral. I like it when my body hides. I like how shame, waiting patiently to be …
Salad Station
I like my poems fresh— my phrases picked early in the morning, before the sun ripens my sentences, wilting words in the heat. Lately, I’ve been trying to find a sharper knife. I want something gleaming, infallible. A serrated mind, more severe in its offerings. I like when words burst in their fullness, like summer fruit blushing towards its yield. I’m stewing the adjectives so they surprise you— languorous in their slumber, dawning purple and rich in your mouth. Pickling makes my …
Communal Consumption
your hot curry breath’s got me in such a tither, ready to inhale and gulp you up—my new oxygen let us tiptoe through our floral saffron lawn float in our pool of chicken vindaloo on garlic naan floaties and even when this crimson spice bath begins to rub us wrong, i’ll peel your flaky rice-grain skin dig in so deep we become embedded in each other and we’ll construct our home with a paneer veneer cover our couches with crisp samosa cushions and sure our roof leaks yogurt sauce from time to …
THE TASTE OF SLUMGULLION
Strands of hay whirl away from the truck, wafting out, down, and over all things, lifted by the breeze from the rocking motion of the truck on the uneven road, wafting down to lay a golden carpet on the concrete, strand by strand rolling past beneath my wheels, the late fall light slanting through the cloud still in the air. I am encased in a world of gold dust and threads, thinking of all those who’d urge me pull out, speed up, and hurry past the steady truck driver …
Not Your Good Chinese Girl—
I swirled a bottle of guava kombucha touched my ear to the mouth to hear it sing to hear the bubbles tinkle and poke like a million grains of jasmine rice being emptied into a jar, mingled with the sea shells and salt from my tearful breaths bursting from behind brittle ribs hell-bound, burdened from breaking hearts and stereotypes about beautiful women —because Mama says it is good to be brave. Eliana Chow is an American-born Chinese writer and editor from Pennsylvania, currently living …
Lightning Theater
I’ve drawn curtains over the moon, hatched over stars, fanned out your antlers. You look like a coat rack. Maybe I should have drawn an octopus. So I’m drawing an octopus. Oy, my octopus looks like a parachute. Let’s call it a jellyfish. The barbed stingers on its tentacles are poisonous. I’m adding a second jellyfish to double the dosage. I see lightning between the four of us. It’s what I was going for. This is our play, my reindeer. I’ll join you onstage. We’ll tangle their tentacles. …