Wrap yourself around Me 40 x 40 x 4,5 cm
MAKE-OVER
And the POETRY edition dedicated
to Asian-American women
poets in prison? that you happened? to appear in?
I think I’m jumping
the gun a little. Too many effing question marks. We both
need a make-over. The only way you earn money
out of me
is I stop writing this poem immediately
and start a screenplay about
a totally made up YOU born in Macao
who at age three is sold to adoptive parents.
In Hollywood. “Swimming pools, movie stars.”
Your name is Liz, Elizabeth Caroline Wu, to be
pedantic about it, but wait a sec,
back up, let’s turn this thing into a novel instead,
a crime novel
about the world’s first and hopefully last
Asian-American hit woman
slash summa cum laude graduate in Women’s Studies
U.C. Berkeley slash poet, expert in radical discourses
set in strophic verse. However. Slipping a mickey to mainly male victims
then suffocating them with a yellow satin pillow
is your real forte, even raison d’ etre. You never need
say a word and no one feels a thing.
PERFECT. Let’s add your entrepreneurial success,
Silicon Valley start-up, ultimate move to Austin, seduction
of billionaire space cadet Rafon Tusk who gradually
absorbs your company, fires the board, installs himself as CEO
so you have no choice but to
take him out, a little powder in his energy drink,
apply the satin pillow
over his always stuffy nose, and over that pouty
mouth of his that you once thought was so “cute”
but now detest, two pillows, and voila
Rafon’s no more than a glorified rumor on the lips
of grieving podcasters.
But wait a sec, back up, let’s simplify
this thing, dial it back, make you look more interesting
than you actually are. FIRST: really short hair.
What used to be called a Little Boy’s haircut but this time for girls.
Then a tattoo of a red spider
crawling up one of your mini-skirted thighs. PERFECT. A cluster
of readymade fans making selfies
with you at some content-free
red carpet event in Bakersfield.
You never need say a word and no one feels a friggin thing.
