Poetry / Dorothy Chan
:: Triple Sonnet for Eggsexuals ::
My friend Colleen says she’s eggsexual,
and I’ve never heard a more brilliant
food metaphor—I dream of shakshuka
with extra basil, and when in doubt, garlic
it out, and black pepper, black pepper, black
pepper, and why do I hate greens for dinner
but love them for breakfast: Eggs Florentine
with artichoke hearts as a surprise, or what
about spinach and poached eggs washed down
with a dry martini—the 11:00 AM meal
of choice for glove lunch goers everywhere,
or as Taneum says, it’s the elusive fantasy
mealtime of queer women, a way of flirtation
that’s much more complex than chugging a beer
and eating hot wings, or as I say to men
on the first date: Let’s get this out of the way:
I will outdrink you. You will think I’m boring
because I hate sports and I love museums.
I hate going to the beach. I hate hiking.
Wow, I’m such a buzzkill holding a whiskey
in a short skirt and red lipstick, but at least
I’m honest, and maybe they’re not enough.
And I’ll take the glove lunch any day—
the matching plaid skirt with blazer mixed
with the glances and blushing under the table
and double the dry martinis before noon,
because why not, I think, when I ask R
on the phone how she likes her eggs and coffee,
and isn’t it funny how these are the questions
you ask when you’re dating? I remember
my dad’s dry scramble vs. my mom’s wet
scramble from childhood, and maybe eggs
are precious, like in the typical middle school
social studies project of treating a hard-boiled
egg like it’s your own child, but I never got it,
because it’s just an egg, and what’s not stopping
me from breaking the shell and getting into
the yolk? And I remember abandoning
my child at the lunch table to buy some chips,
branded a “bad mom” from that moment on,
but it’s just an egg—and oh, how I felt ripped off
when it didn’t hatch into a baby bird.
:: Triple Sonnet, Because She Makes Me Hot ::
She makes me hot, so I eat chocolate cheesecake
after our phone call, down an espresso, and take
a hot shower, because it’s one of those nights
I’ve craved since I was a little girl who
discovered that boys weren’t the only option,
and I remember my first crushes on women—
the fantasy of starring in my own trashy
mid 2000s reality show on MTV where
it’s a double (or triple)
shot at love,
and I’d strut around in emerald lingerie,
telling the boys and girls to spank me,
feed me carrot cake, and go out for a midnight
swim in the nude. And isn’t it sexy how often
water appears in our dreams? But of course,
not all love is trashy, and I think about
dressing up in a cheerleader costume,
telling the lady contestants, I used to sneak
a glimpse of the girls on the football field.
But I’d rather skip gym class, paint all over
canvases with beauties, or be ambitious, like
Tara Reid’s Vicky in American Pie, looking
oh, so fine in her gray Cornell t-shirt, and
it’s oh so tight, Tara, and isn’t it ironic
how I ended up going Big Red, or back
to my college days in Ithaca when my friend
L and I would tongue under my covers,
saying “This is practice for the boys,”
but we knew what we were doing—How
does one even achieve intimacy?
is really the million-dollar question
of the century, and L, what we had
wasn’t a phase, and I remember donning
your yellow flannel after the sun went down
in those Ithaca winters, and how you’d
eye me saying, “You look like you just
had sex,” and we’d laugh and hug and I’d walk
home. And sometimes I feel frozen in that
moment in time, when I’d get home, crawl
into my own bed, in the nude, thinking about
my friend Anna’s words, “I think girls in boyish
clothes look more feminine,” and I’d wipe off
my red lipstick with a tissue—fall asleep.
:: Triple Sonnet and Three Cheers for the Asian Bachelorette ::
Yena wants an Asian Bachelorette,
but she’s worried our bachelorette
will get disowned by her family,
because nothing screams Dear Mom and Dad
abandon me more than a starring role
on reality TV and even the thought
of casual dating, and I wonder why
parents like mine expect me to pop out
a baby when I wasn’t supposed to date
in my twenties. It’s like the stork flew in,
and out came the perfect black-haired child
I’d dedicate my life to, giving up poetry,
along with the endless cycle of girls and
boys and great lovers in infatuation,
and my problem is that I can’t say yes,
though I think yes, done, and one are
the sexiest words in the English language,
or maybe I’m the Asian Bachelorette
Yena so desires—the female lead who
leaves you hanging each week because
I can’t make up my mind when it comes
to love. I’ll cry on cue in a ballroom gown
in a castle in Switzerland, after a tough
elimination, regretting my decision right
away, but scratch that, I’d never wear
am evening dress since I hate formal wear,
and nothing turns me off more than a man
in a suit, and why all the focus on the outfits
when this is my life and my feelings
and the hot sex I crave every night
under the covers, and what if I played
my Bachelorette role more Flavor of Love
or I Love New York, giving out nicknames
to pass the time, because we all need
a little levity when it comes to love,
so how’s about Stud or 8-Pack or Sailor
Uranus to my Sailor Neptune. And yes
to all this cheer especially when the final two
meet my family over hotpot, and I end up
choosing the one they dislike, but scratch that,
I’ll eliminate both, because nothing’s better
than being a free agent who doesn’t settle.
:: Triple Sonnet for Hers and Hers Towels and Princess Aurora’s Blue/Pink Gown ::
My brother’s wife gifts me a his and hers
hot chocolate set for Christmas, and I want
to scream, because in what universe are
his and hers towels and his and hers mugs
and his and hers bathrobes still a thing?
All I see is his and hers rubbing it in
that I don’t have a his (that they know of),
but really, what’s with shoving this hetero
agenda down my throat, along with cocoa,
and my friend Drew says at least I get double
the chocolate, when what I really want is
a frozen hot chocolate with extra whipped
cream and chocolate shavings and cherry
on top from Serendipity 3, which is ironic
because that’s the site of all the romantic
comedies I hate. And what’s with shoving
the hetero agenda down the throats of young
women, and I remember having a freak out
at the Krispy Kreme in Rainbow Springs
Shopping Center in Vegas, because if
gender reveal cakes and gender reveal parties
anger me to no end, then gender reveal donuts
are the spawn of evil dessert we don’t need,
because who chews into a custard crème,
sees pink or blue, and feels normal afterwards,
when yellow was just fine? It’s the economy
of it all I hate the most—the way blue boy
and pink girl keeps getting pushed, when
the only blue boy I know is the oil portrait
by Gainsborough or the men’s magazine of
abs abs abs and then some more dessert.
Or what about pink girl / blue girl, also
known as Aurora’s color-changing gown
in Sleeping Beauty, and it’s funny how
this princess only had eighteen minutes
of screen time, most of which is taken up
by this pink and blue debate, when I really
wanted to see her in green dancing in
the woods, seducing all the birds around
her, barefoot, in charge, dumping Prince Phillip,
because that kiss was dry as hell, and a princess
needs at least sixty minutes of screen time.
From the writer
:: Account ::
Often, at readings, I get asked about the origins of my triple sonnets. I’m very proud to call the triple sonnet my signature form. I start by saying that three is such a magic number. Think back to the fairytales and fantasy books you read as a kid. I mean, the best things in life come in threes: Spumoni and Neapolitan ice cream, bears, hot celebrities with three names, the Powerpuff Girls, the BLT sandwich, etc. It’s like getting three wishes all at once. And, the sonnet is such a magical form.
I think about how the best poems don’t contain just one volta/turn but multiple voltas/turns. It’s a beautiful surprise each time that happens. And it’s a beautiful surprise when it happens at an unexpected spot in the poem. I think the best feeling in the experience of reading a poem is when you get to the very end, and the last line makes you go back to the first, thus going in an infinite circle, right back to the title and the first line.
My poetry works with excess. I mean, why have only one sonnet [or insert anything else you’re obsessed with] when you could have three (or five or one hundred or ten billion)? I love food, and in particular, this set of triple sonnets emphasizes appetite, whether it’s about the speaker’s cravings for shakshuka and Eggs Florentine in “Triple Sonnet for Eggsexuals,” her desires for this woman who “makes me feel hot, so I eat chocolate cheesecake / after our phone call” in “Triple Sonnet, Because She Makes Me Hot,” her need for reality TV fame in “Triple Sonnet and Three Cheers for the Asian Bachelorette,” or her mission to end heteronormativity and the binary structure in “Triple Sonnet for Hers and hers Towels and Princess Aurora’s Blue/Pink Gown.” I think it’s important to let our cravings out in poetry. It’s all very wild.
Dorothy Chan is the author of Revenge of the Asian Woman (Diode Editions, 2019), Attack of the Fifty-Foot Centerfold (Spork Press, 2018), and the chapbook Chinatown Sonnets (New Delta Review, 2017). She is a two-time Ruth Lilly and Dorothy Sargent Rosenberg Poetry Fellowship finalist, a 2020 finalist for the Lambda Literary Award in Bisexual Poetry for Revenge of the Asian Woman, and a 2019 recipient of the Philip Freund Prize in Creative Writing from Cornell University. Her work has appeared in POETRY, The American Poetry Review, Academy of American Poets, and elsewhere. Chan is an assistant professor of English at the University of Wisconsin-Eau Claire, poetry editor of Hobart, book review co-editor of Pleiades, and founding editor and editor-in-chief of Honey Literary. Visit her website at dorothypoetry.com.