Poetry / Dorothy Chan

:: Triple Sonnet of Fried Food, Fortune Cookies, and Miracles ::

                    – for Mickey 

My dog Buzzie’s in heaven eating fried chicken
because it’s Christmas, and I swear I just
saw his short legs with wings chase my dad
out the kitchen to As Seen on TV
in the living room where my mom’s watching
an infomercial for a miracle
fryer that leaves no grease, so it’s fries all
day, Tater Tots and tempura for dinner
and deep fried Oreos for dessert that’s
all-you-can-eat with no consequences—
a contraption so celestial I know
it doesn’t actually exist. Buzzie’s
sending me a message from the clouds,
a holiday hello, a have fun while you can, Dorothy.

And if Buzzie’s saying hello from Cloud 9,
I know his fur’s looking more fabulous
than all the women in Pantene Pro-V
commercials with their hair flips coming from
vitamins and minerals or the girls
who oooooh, aahhh, and don’t stop for Herbal Essences,
and we get it. Shower time’s sexy time™.
Buzzie’s eating a fruit plate right about now,
looking down as he wonders when we’ll leave
for our annual holiday buffet
as my mom tells me spirits never leave
their homes, and that we believe our loved ones
visit us in dreams about a week after
they pass away, to say I love you.

I love you, Dorothy. I hear this in my dreams,
a reminder not just of Buzzie’s love,
but my parents’, who visited the family
psychic even before I was born,
and no, I won’t give you Crouching Tiger,
Hidden Dragon, but I will give you the story
of my Tiger Father and Rabbit Mother
getting fortunes for me, their Snake Daughter: 
tales of my temper and future husband,
stories of how much I’ll end up loving
my future children—if only I knew.
Years later, after I’m born, Mom and Dad
and I are at a Chinese restaurant, chowing
down Neapolitan fortune cookies,
because more than anything, I believe in fate.


 

:: Robot Fetish, Because We’re All A Little Lonely ::

A man in China collects life-size dolls not as lovers,
but as daughters he tucks them into bed every night

once he changes them out of dresses into PJs,
the wall of purple unicorns and clouds behind them

as they lie side by side, eyes open—fetish is fetish
is fetish passed down to his son who’s gifted a doll

on his sixteenth for pleasure purposes. And it’s breaking
news like this that makes me wonder about loneliness:

the virtual boyfriends and girlfriends that can’t be conjured,
or the men in Japan who set a table for two at home:

a glass of red wine for him, a slice of pizza for her—
her, the four-foot pillow with bikini-clad anime character

printed on, with facial expression that’s ready to squirm. 
But could you really fall in love with a robot if it told you

I love you? What difference does it make if you’re looking
for validation? So, why don’t we all have sex with robots,

cross the deed off our bucket lists right now? We’ll rejoice,
buy them clothes at the virtual marketplace—a Hajime Sorayama

fantasy of robot babes pulling a Marilyn Monroe: dress blowing
in the wind higher and higher—she seduces you with her legs

until you realize her crack doesn’t exist—she can’t give you human
flesh, the hardness and softness of two bodies pressed 

against each other in the sheets, and who cares if she tells you 
she loves you—I’d rather have the thrill of the chase.

From the writer

:: Account ::

A week after my beloved Buzzie passed away, he vis­it­ed me in a fab­u­lous dream. I recall hear­ing a bell and then before I know it, I’m up in the clouds with him. His sis­ters and West­ie friend are nap­ping next to him and he’s just loung­ing, enjoy­ing the view, and get­ting ready to dig into his snack. And then the most amaz­ing thing hap­pens: he opens his mouth and words come out. When he says, “I love you, Dorothy. I miss you,” he says it in the exact deep and slow voice my mom and I always imag­ined him hav­ing. I love being right. I also love how he offers me a piece of filet mignon that’s served in this sil­ver tro­phy. This was Buzzie’s first vis­it but not his last.

“Triple Son­net of Fried Food, For­tune Cook­ies, and Mir­a­cles” is about those moments I feel Buzzie’s pres­ence. I like to think that he went home for the hol­i­days. He prob­a­bly miss­es (not) watch­ing tele­vi­sion with my dad and chas­ing our fam­i­ly around the kitchen. I know there’s amaz­ing food where he is, but I real­ly miss shar­ing apples with him. When­ev­er I go home, my mom reas­sures me that Buzzie’s always with us. On a side note, my dad and I real­ly did watch that “mir­a­cle fry­er” com­mer­cial and pro­ceed­ed to ask my mom whether such a thing could exist. One of my weird­er pas­times is mak­ing fun of those As Seen on TV com­mer­cials. It’s hilar­i­ous how peo­ple in that uni­verse can­not func­tion. I also can’t believe any­one would buy jean paja­mas or any of the ridicu­lous stuff they have on there.

But real­ly, I write about love. It’s in those small moments that we feel a sense of fam­i­ly. And there’s also love in the friend­ship sense. “Triple Son­net” is ded­i­cat­ed to my good friend Mick­ey, who is iron­i­cal­ly a veg­e­tar­i­an. Oh well. At least he shares Buzzie’s love for apples. “Robot Fetish, Because We’re All A Lit­tle Lone­ly” is also ulti­mate­ly about love. And I wish that all of you would either curl up next to some­one you love or go out and enjoy the thrill of the chase—nothing’s bet­ter than that!

Dorothy Chan’s chap­book, Chi­na­town Son­nets, will be pub­lished May 2017 with New Delta Review. She was a 2014 final­ist for the Ruth Lil­ly and Dorothy Sar­gent Rosen­berg Poet­ry Fel­low­ship and a 2017 final­ist for the Lena-Miles Wev­er Todd Prize for Poet­ry from Pleiades Press. Her work has appeared or is forth­com­ing in Black­bird, Plume, The Jour­nal, Spill­way, Lit­tle Patux­ent Review, and The McNeese Review. She is the Assis­tant Edi­tor of The South­east Review. dorothypoetry.com