You asked for my name, knuckles crisscrossed, body
all power stance. I say it’s Sally.
Like silly sally, short for sarah sally? The tar of your
cigarette clinging to my hair, skepticism threading itself
through my sweater, prelude to an ambush.
No. What’s your REAL name—really
more of an accusation/denial than question.
What is this, a fucking fishing expedition?
I let my words take refuge under the trembling
of the tacky DJ set & your beer-coated breath.
Because if I opened myself up for cross-examination,
where would I even begin? That I blurted Minnie
when the blonde lady in my trial DisneyEnglish lesson
petted my head and called me dear. That I swooned
over her plushy red headband & click-clacking stilettos
& could only name myself after an anthropomorphic mouse
when I wanted to become every
sweeping fantasy in the world. That I was an ugly baby,
all bruises and Michelin Man-like. So when other
newborns were buttercup, sunshine, sugar, I was 点点—
dot dot, after the cherry angioma seared into my forehead,
before they lasered it off, fearing it was cancerous. That I
curse the name whenever I feel small. That it reads
映其 on my passport, when it should really say 800 yuan,
the amount Ba paid the fortune teller to bless my life in two
characters. 映 with a skinny sun radical and 其 a pronoun pointing
to who knows what. The sun will always shine &
look after you, they’d croon like a prayer. But what if
I want to be the sun, the nine suns Houyi skewered with
his arrow, relinquished from their cruel rotation of duty, set free
as blistering three-legged crows. This is the name I tell you.
You say you like the ring. yingqiyingqiyingqi
you made me whisper into your ear, till it turned
sour in my mouth, carcass of everything it never was.