LAURA YAN
The Rusty Toque | Issue 11 | Poetry | November 30, 2016
TOO MUCH BLUSH IS ALWAYS A GOOD LOOKlo has a body made for sex skin of henna and lips an invitation looks delectable in a dress half off even though I finds girls more pretty than hot me and lo and lo's beau go to a strip club in bushwick where I’m red-lipped and underdressed and get a dance from a russian ballerina skin like skim milk who gives me her phone number elizabeth knows how to dress well, stands with her back bare spine curved, on the sidewalk waits for me with the shy, sly expectancy of someone who knows she looks good though most often she hates her body says if only she could be small at the party, she keeps her velvet gloves on ben likes my body in nothing but pearls and prada heels bought on sale he has nice lips, hips, smiles, what do you want, he asks and I tell him and he does breaks belt over skin leaves pretty red welts I cry, not sure if it’s his touch or knowing it’s the last time before I leave new york I crumple kleenex, take off revlon lips gather silk and lace and stockings slightly torn for a bin behind the salvation army warehouse where pavement glitters with glass and walk three blocks to get a bagel thinking I won’t need lingerie in grad school though I might be wrong EIGHTFOLD PATH1 you’re into meditation and I’m into your cock your michangelo proportions and golden hair lit up you’re six feet tall, all-american easily wounded when I ask you about the history of men you think I misunderstand intimacy but I’m in love with physical beauty you’ve been accused of too much empathy I don’t tell you what I’ve been accused of you come, whimpering like a girl and I come, resenting you I wake up with a bruise size of a thumbprint, sweetly purple —my fault biting down while you followed the eightfold path fucking me 2 you tell me you’ve been sitting for five years sitting what a way to put it. I sit, inhale, exhale think about not thinking. pins in my legs, ache in my back, pain that glides the kind you swallow, a little nervously knowing it gets worst with time. there’s a Buddhist story about the two arrows: first one pierces skin, hurts but the second is your own making: your own self-inflicted sparkling kind of suffering. 3 Buddhism is nice in that it encourages questions an investigation, they call it, and no one gives you the answers. well, they do-- but it’s not the answers that matter, it’s the asking, or maybe the intention behind the asking. so what if the world isn’t just pacifists and idealists and ascetics? like me, an aesthetic, into fucking, the light at dusk, waking up to your jawline, golden hair lit up. 4 I used to have a sex blog. I had fans: this is my favorite blog of yours, someone wrote. It was my favorite too. why even have lovers if you can’t write about them after? It felt honest until it didn’t turning one-night-stands into unlocked doors, writing splendor until there was too little. 5 In high school you played water polo with chlorine coopered hair that stayed in place when touched I had my first kiss with a boy who took ecstasy, kissed until our lips swelled—and me, wondering if it was supposed to be everything. (you’re the one who makes it look easy and I’m the one kneeling before a water glass, thinking: I’m wrong, I’m always wrong always doing it wrong.) 6 An older version of myself will live in a brownstone apartment german shepherd and wall of books the lover will have died first-- a mountaineering accident I’ve thought this through. you can’t love someone unless they’ve hurt you. 7 compassion is grand on the winning end. 8 A man heard me read a poem once, said: I was expecting it to turn sentimental at the end. it didn’t. he liked it. |
LAURA YAN is a writer, artist, and wanderer. Her essays and journalism have appeared in GQ, PacificStandard, GOOD, Longreads, Penthouse, Jezebel & elsewhere. Her fiction and poetry have appeared (or is upcoming) in Foundling Review, Elastic Magazine, Newer York, and Lonewolf Magazine. She’s a MFA candidate at the University of British Columbia, & tweets @noirony
