Paddy Qiu

Chinoiserie, Unraveled

…17th- and 18th-century Western style of interior design, furniture, pottery, textiles, and garden design that represents fanciful European interpretations of Chinese styles. 
—Britannica

I.

I’m lying next to this man, our mouths reeking of:
            leather clubs, thigh sweats, photobooth pictures of viscera splattered on sink. 

            Twink twats calling their sphincters “bussy” and “poom pooms,” progressive white queers,
            so progressive, made us progress ourselves all the way to the exit.

This is our 2 a.m.:
            whirs of convection fans, as I touch his temple in the damp alley of July after hours.
            ass grab, Lazy Susan swivel, profess against my better judgment that:

“this man is not white, so perhaps for tonight, I will consume him.”

Like glisten of watermelon cubes, like boneless wings dripping in the porch light,
            like the flies rimming the precipice-slicked glass, their only salvation from an insatiate heat.

II.

I wanna know how I’ll escape my haunted prospective,
            uncurling from a drunken stupor, land locked to his fevered tongue upon my breasts.

It’s warm, so I wanna count every hair on his chest until the day breaks open from the wrath of an omnipotent sun—look back at my Sodom as it burns.
            Tact gaze, eyeing my Orient asymmetry. Sticky fingers feeling down my porcelain vessels.

It blisters to the touch, so I tell him to plunder me like a chinoiserie,
            silky weaving, tasting my jaded miasma of sweat on collar, wrists tied to its perpetual query.

What was his name, again? How did he say it? What must I say to sate my appetite? 

            Tell him: I am an emptied import under my waistline, so paint hyacinths on the inners of my
            thighs. Maybe evergreen dragons if they’ll fit, 

            hell, even chin-bearded slit-eyed old motherfuckers who will chant in an impression of a
            language I have had to throw overboard to save my cargo, my body, my wreckage littered on
            the riptide of your shores.

And again, I will leave before we become:

another bloated display in an Orient museum. Palm-colored tongues rimming circlets into
the glass, feasting upon the whimsical spectacle of two
bodies pounding their flesh together in unison.

Tell him: that’s what it’ll be if you plunder me. So, plunder me, I dare you.

III.

He doesn’t touch me. Instead kisses my cheek, his scruff manicured like a diplomat’s lawn.

This is our 3 a.m.:
whirs of convection fans, as he touches my temple to the damp medley of July after hours.
squeezing my hands, his hair in the crook of my neck, professes with his best judgement:

“you are not white, so perhaps for tonight, you can stay with me…on the condition you do not refer to your sphincter as a bussy.”

His shorts on me like a sail on a paper boat dragged onto the shore, guides my hand along the
stitching of his Yemeni blanket, telling me it has his mother’s hands.
Meaning: her hands had grabbed it on discount at the Arab store a few months back.
Meaning: who the hell has time these days to make a whole blanket, let’s be for real here.

He rests himself in the cul-de-sac between my shoulder blades. Tells me I smell nice, then begins to
snore like an asthmatic drosophila, 
stepping on the shards of a chinoiserie wreckage, 

Drosophila, embracing a chinoiserie body unravelling itself into him,
This strange man, becoming my prospective of a palatable sanctuary.

Its flavors on my tongue like the glisten of watermelon cubes, like boneless wings dripping in the porch light, like the flies dissipating from the precipice-slicked glass, their only salvation from an insatiate heat.

Unravels themselves into the arduous morning of an omnipotent sun.

Paddy Qiu is currently attending the University of Kansas, studying behavioral neuroscience and creative writing. Their work primarily focuses on the navigation of spaces, emphasizing the conduits of knowledge found in ancestral trauma and the nurturing of interpersonal relationships. They are the 2021 Winner of The William Herbert Memorial Poetry Contest with honors including The John F. Eberhardt Excellence in Writing Award, The C.L. Clark Writing Award for BIPOC Writers, and The Henry Matthew Weidner Essay Award, being featured in FOLIO, The Foundationalist, Zoetic Press, and Kiosk Magazine, among others.