triple sonnet for oversexed and overripe and overeager

dorothy chan

He asks me if I own any thigh high boots

for the home movie of our dreams, so we can

have our Pam and Tommy moment, unleaked

and let’s go old school on a tripod camera

then get drunk on a boat, me in a red one-piece,

nipples popping out—let me put a Cherry Coke

over them—and I tell him I have absolutely

no grace as a woman. I can’t walk in heels.

I hate florals—how innovative for spring.

I’ll do my makeup in five minutes or under,

because what more do you need than a good lip

for pleasure and a rosy cheek for treasure? 

I’d rather be kicking it in Air Force 1s with

plaid skirts and sweat dresses or go ultra-sexy

with lingerie as outerwear in public, looking

like I have some place better to be than here,

and isn’t the key to life to walk into the room

like you’re the most important person. I lace up 

my kicks, put on a red plaid dress, from the noughties

era of Betsey Johnson reliving her Club Kid days,

hot pink bra underneath, thinking about how 

tomboys in anime never wear their uniforms

properly—there’s always an unladylike bit:

an untucked shirt, an unbuttoned blazer, a loose

tie, sneakers instead of Oxfords, and of course,

she’s the one in the group voted most fun to be 

around. Don’t we all want to be the best time. 

I think about what it even means to be ladylike

as a woman. Once upon a time, my father

told me to be a little lady, in the middle of 

a department store shoe section. I still hate

him for that. Lady is code for woman to be 

controlled. I cannot be controlled. I will not

be managed—I’ll roll around in shorts and crop

tops for the rest of my life—the whole woman-

child aesthetic of dressing down for success 

or I don’t care what you think about me,

because I’m a wonder, and I don’t care about you.

I own the room. I overline my lips, throw on

a pair of boy shorts and a mesh bralette,

ready for the home video of fantasies—

it’s my moment of splashing out of the water.

about the artist

Dorothy Chan is the author of most recently, BABE, a collection forthcoming with Diode Editions this winter 2021, in addition to Revenge of the Asian Woman (Diode Editions, 2019), Attack of the Fifty-Foot Centerfold (Spork Press, 2018), and Chinatown Sonnets (New Delta Review, 2017). She was a 2020 and 2014 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 Reviews Co-Editor of Pleiades, and Co-Founder and Editor in Chief of Honey Literary, a 501(c)(3) literary arts organization. Visit her website at dorothypoetry.com