Anna May Wong fans her time machine, and: Anna May Wong blows out sixteen candles, and: Anna May Wong meets Josephine Baker, and: Anna May Wong makes cameos, and: Anna May Wong rates the runway
2015; University of Missouri; Volume: 38; Issue: 1 Linguagem: Inglês
10.1353/mis.2015.0000
ISSN1548-9930
Autores Tópico(s)Poetry Analysis and Criticism
ResumoAnna May Wong fans her time machine, and: Anna May Wong blows out sixteen candles, and: Anna May Wong meets Josephine Baker, and: Anna May Wong makes cameos, and: Anna May Wong rates the runway Sally Wen Mao (bio) Anna May Wong fans her time machine I’ve tried so hard to erase myself.That iconography—my facein Technicolor, the manta ray eyelashes, the nacre and chignon.I’ll bet four limbs I’d be cast as anotherMongol slave. I will blow a hole in the airwaves, duck lasers in my dugout.I’m done kidding them. Today I flythe hell out in my Thunderbolt. To the future, where I’m forgotten.Where surely no one gives a puckwho I kiss: man, woman, or goldfish. In the blustering garden where I was fedcompliments like you are our goldenapple and you are our yellow star, I lost my lust for luster. They’d smile, fuckme over for someone else: ringletted womenwith sloping eyelids played the Chinese cynosure, every time. Ursa Minor, you neverwarned me: all my life I’ve been minor,played the strumpet, the starved one. I was taproot and crook. How I’ve huncheddown low, wicked girl, until this good earthswallowed me raw. Take me now, dear comet, [End Page 83] to the future, where surely I’ll playsome girl from LA, the unlikely heroinewho breaks up the brawl, saving everyone. [End Page 84] Anna May Wong blows out sixteen candles When I was sixteen, I modeled fur coats for a furrier.White men gazed down my neck like wolves but my mink collar protected me. When I was sixteen,I was an extra in A Tale of Two Worlds. If I didn’t pour someone’s tea, then I was someone’s wife. Every brother,father, or husband of mine was nefarious. They held me at knifepoint, my neck in a chokehold. If they didn’t murderme, I died of an opium overdose. Now it’s 1984 and another white girl awaits her sweet sixteen. It’s 1984and another white girl angsts about a jock who kisses her at the end of the film. Now it’s 1984 and LongDuk Dong is the white girl’s houseguest. He dances, drunk, agog with gong sounds. All around the nation,teens still taunt us. Hallways bloat with sweaters, slurs. When I was eight, the boy who sat behind me brought pinsto class. “Do Asians feel pain the way we do?” he’d ask. He’d stick the needles to the back of my neck until I winced.I wore six wool coats so I wouldn’t feel the sting. It’s 1984 so cast me in a new role already. Cast me as a pothead,an heiress, a gymnast, a queen. Cast me as a castaway in a city without shores. Cast me as that girl who rivets center stageor cast me away, into the blue where my lips don’t touch [End Page 85] or say. If I take my time machine back to sixteen, or twenty,or eight, I’d blow out all my candles. Sixteen wishes extinguish and burn. The boy will never kiss me at the endof the movie. The boy will only touch me with his needles. [End Page 86] Anna May Wong meets Josephine Baker Casino de Paris, seat in the back. It’s 1932 and I’m in exile again. Paris makes the best kind of exile—the woman on stage agrees, riding in on her mane of sequined feathers. Horses like white phantoms galloping under her dress. What is it about the stage lights that casts our bodies both desirable and diabolical? She lifts her wings, and air rushes—lightning strikes the audience, the white feathers fall. I catch her eye at midnight and she invites me into her dressing room. Blood orange peels scattered on the ground, her cockatoos wailing in a cage, her pet cheetah spread-eagled on her alpaca furs. We toast to Piccadilly, Paris, drink brandy, chat about home— all the reasons we left, all the reasons we’re...
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