Anime Wong

My friend in Los Angeles says I look like a cartoon character

Like I could have leapt out of a terebi-manga

Like I could be Speed Racer’s girlfriend cheering on the sidelines

My hand demurely smoothing down my skirt, my mouth

            A perpetually sweet, pornographic O

It’s creepy, she says

That under the

Cute and Innocent and

Terribly Funny exterior

Slurps

A voracious, glutinous,

Pink jellyfish of a

Mind

Sucking in steel and spitting out

Shiny, sharp-pointed stars

Piercing porcelain blue neck skin

Digging

            And digging

                        And digging

                                                Dirty long fingernails

Until they strike the

            Clean white bone.


© Jane Park


Published in Experiments in a Jazz Aesthetic: Art, Activism, Academia and The Austin Project, edited by Omi Osun Joni L. Jones, Lisa L. Moore, and Sharon Bridgforth (University of Texas Press, 2010).