Jenny Zhang
This I know This I am sure of the only white person at the poetry reading was totally related to me I don’t call anything a dream your primeval stink really gets me I think fucking is P in V but later my mom tells me there’s more Is p pussy and v vagina, I say You must try everything, she says I say it too always striving to be someone’s mirror everyone tells me I am my mother’s mother both of us were born with curly pubes that straightened out late in life she tells me about a Chinese academic and I’m like, I’m a Chinese academic! and she’s like, yeeeah but not like him so yeeeeeeeeeeeeeeaaaaaaaah I’m not like him I don’t have anything to say I don’t have very many ideas after falling in love I smell medicinal shit everywhere trying to locate the source I trace it to the inside of my bedroom walls “If you never marry and stay in New York no one will ever see the lovely paintings from your childhood that hang on your walls,” Yah mom, I know that Is that what you want, she inquires I know the answer I know my answer I know the answer still I don’t think I have enough still I don’t think I think enough I make Minnie Mouse dive into my muff and I swear to god she’s the only one who gets me: “You, my dear Minnie are my best and only friend no one else in this whole world understands me.” I swear to god I shit myself standing up reading Sweet Valley High in a library squeezing my cheeks with determination when Bruce Patton “grazes” Elizabeth’s breast later I swear to god I wrote “graces” her breast in my diary and I am so excited by this first evidence of poetic greatness that I wipe my big sloppy cunt lips on my diary so I can frame it and get it shown in the next Whitney Biennial I know lots of white guys who have rejected their family wealth who have done this framed their own cum splattered against the front page of yesterday’s newspaper I have been offered day-old semen in a champagne glass that came with the discounted Moet my mom bought from Costco it’s important to get a good deal on cum-vessels tomorrow I think I shall shop in bulk for flour and sugar so that I can bake cum cakes for my own true love how good I am how saintly my practice becomes how generous I naturally can be it’s everyone’s party it’s everyone’s right “just because it offends u doesn’t mean u you should make everyone else feel like shit” just because most days I feel like doo doo doesn’t mean you shouldn’t say sorry every once in a while every once in a while my mom is all like, say sorry and I’m all like, say sorry and she’s all like, say sorry without the say and I’m all like, say sorry without the say! I bet if she could she’d stuff me right back up her lil cunt and we would fulfill each other in ways we cannot dream of now it is not so doo doo to be admired when someone says: I dream of your rice paper skin and those almond milk eyes and your water lily breath gets my American hamburger so completely solid I am like, yah I know you think I don’t see myself the way you see me? but I’m not gonna make this about me I’m not gonna eat Keat’s eye after all and use it to see who will read me when I’m dead to see who will write about the women in the fire after the rest of New York’s landfill floats away I swear I am related to every single person who has ever suffered not that this is about me or my suffering or how I am at the center of all this how no one has ever had it the way I have had it how I am the only one who has ever volunteered to give up my cunt without anyone asking! People who know me ask: how does it feel that the most tragic thing about you is something the average person cannot ever see? it feels secretive, I shall say at the next party it feels wonderful, I shall say at the next dinner it feels tremendous, I shall say at the next wine and cheese I feel everything, I shall say to the one person who has nearly suffered as much as me we are both so lucky, I shall say we have both lived so much, I will say don’t you think so? I find myself saying don’t you feel it to be true?
