When Dorothy Chan accepts one of my poems, a 

fellow poet says: “You guys can be poo poo 

platter together.” Yea we’ll make you moo goo 

gai pan. How food fuses consumption & identity. 

How the act of eating is erotic & violent. How I 

once promised to swallow John like an eclair, 

wholly consuming his confection. Lately I’ve 

been obsessed with being enough for a boy. One

specific boy. One boy in particular. One boy 

whose nakedness I’m curious abt. Phil Dunphy 

said that success is 1% inspiration,

98% perspiration, & 2% attention to detail.  I wonder 

what will be enough for this boy. How queerness 

is a vector & not a destination. 80% of life is 

showing up. I’m showing up for your body. It is 

very satisfying to call someone a ******. The way 

the word swirls in your mouth like a fine 

whiskey & comes out silky smooth. I mean the 

word Fremder, German for “stranger.” Eating 

makes me vulnerable. How race is a fishbone in 

the throat. How I want to be a lost tampon 

between your scarecrow gf’s thighs, meeting you

when you come through. How you couldn’t 

masturbate after moving back in with your mom. 

Untouched Vaseline, high on a shelf somewhere, 

out of sight & away from inquisitive eyes.

Sometimes you show me glimpses of the real 

you. I want to pierce the veil. Eat you peskily. 

Pay tribute to your visual culture. A political 

act. My body is inscribed with the marks of race, 

& food, & you. Tell me what you eat & I shall tell 

you what you are. We are all chameleons in our 

diet, salamanders in our habitat, inasmuch as we 

live always in the fire of our own smoldering

combustion. We are perishing & being born again 

at every instant. We enter over & over again into 

the womb of that great mother from whom we get 

our bones & flesh, blood & marrow. Last night I 

dreamt that you’d written me. But of course you 

hadn’t. I want to smear my smile onto your face. 

Share the standard Chinese greeting: “吃饭了吗?” 

“Have you eaten?” How we sense our own fear. 

Slip out of our half-underground apartment. 

Drive past the sign. Avert our gaze. Get trashed 

like the Bush twins. Yea I tend to think that 

we’ll be together again. You got to burn to 

shine. A baby puffin is called a puffling. Nutella 

is pronounced “new-tell-uh,” not “NUT-tella.” I 

want to nut in the first Canadian that comes to

mind. There is no such thing as permission 

cheese. If I get dragged out of here in cuffs, 

Bruce, what do you think my last act would be?

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