Are you afraid of me because I see both the sunrise and the moonrise

 I once wrapped a cicada in tissue and set it on fire. I listened until there was nothing to hear. Authoritarian states want your silence.  噤若寒蟬 jìn ruò hán chán to keep quiet out of fear, as cicadas do in the autumn chill. Must we die for just causes? Rise like the tides. Stand. Or sit because some of us have already lost our limbs. I am not the last oracle because we can all see what’s coming. It’s not prophecy, it’s forecasting. Find your people. Run in packs. Be a pride. Be a seethe if you want to but remember why we seethe with anger and stake vampires in the stories of old. If it's a question of blood, I play with needles in public: it’s called a sewing circle. Or sexier yet, a mending circle. Now, please pass me my pincushion. My mind is always in the gutter, so I may revere the sky. I think about my grandmother, who taught me the Buddhist way of mercy, as I look on the caterpillar in my sink. To flush or not to flush? To forgive or not to forgive? I cannot tell you what to do. All I can do is ask you to think of Papatūānuku and Ranginui, of order and chaos, of austerity and opulence, of requests and counteroffers, of kink and vanilla, of service and pleasure. I scald my knees to pray in the bath. I change cat litter to practice humility. This mermaid is 6% mirthful. Forgive, then do it differently.

I came here tonight because I wanted to experience wanting and being wanted

I am here because I want to experience wanting and being wanted. Thank you for your part in this. What do you want from tonight? You tell me about how your radically-radically-left friends reject the term ‘girlfriend’. I offer you the term nesting partner, except we know that we’re too devoted to grids and hierarchies - you an ex-architect, me an ex-designer! - so it’s really primary partner but that’s kind of splitting hairs until other people are running their fingers through ours. I meant it when I said in the interview for the Chinese Languages in Aotearoa Project that the poet is my most outspoken self. 離經叛道a perversion of scripture and a going against of the Way, the capital-double-you-ay. If you want an appropriate version of me, may I recommend that video? But I’m reading live and you can’t invite me to read live anywhere. I tell my truths carefully, except I am a poet and everyone is here tonight. I want to know what you do for aftercare before I know your name. I have decided my next book will be called Dirty Laundry and there will be a poem titled What it is like to look upon your mother’s vulva at age seventeen and another poem titled What it is like to look upon your father’s anus at age twenty-three. I come from a literary tradition of exquisite couplets. Exquisite coupling is in my blood. I dare you to teach these poems in the curriculum because close-reading is a skill that will set you up to have a uniquely singular voice. I will want to choose the typefaces for my work without any consideration for your house style. You will be lucky to publish me. I am very frank about how I like my letterforms; I don’t care about being cool when it comes to micro-typography. I want everyone to admire the anatomy of type. I want to take off your clothes and not care about where our pretences fall. Give me all the humanist serifs. I accept that I write about myself as reflected in other people and I can’t take my eyes off of this new angle you offer me. You speak of Versailles with blasé indifference, and I love you for it. If I think about the clean-up I would smash no mirrors, not even for dramatic effect or euphoric epiphany. The incendiary force of my rage frightens me because what if I burn the house down? I know how cold it is to stand outside, locked out after curfew, not even from kissing boys in cars but just being in cars in cars in cars/cerated: trapped in East/ Auckland, you have a traffic problem. We get to elect our local government. We do not get to choose our parents. I spend my disposable income on therapy which I can afford because I’m not bearing the opportunity cost of children. Once you’ve broken your mother’s heart, everything else is easy. Holding space for Asian New Zealand voices? It’s already on my to-do list. I will kick down as many doors as you care to give me. I am here so parents can say if you are not careful, you will be like her and for the ones they bring into this world to say if I want to, I can be like her. How do you feel about how much force I’m using? Harder? Isn’t life hard enough already? Harder. Anything can be okay if I consent. My therapist pulls my mother up – I notice your daughter has said very little this session. Remember your daughter’s request to ask her more questions and to give her space to answer. My mother asks me if I am eating well. How do I tell her I do not cook because she never stopped cooking and I welcome my appetites because I reject starving myself lonely? Ask open-ended questions. How do I feel about how much force you’re using? How do I like being touched? I’m making my stage presence my erogenous zone. I am turned on by the transparency of your desire; I take advantage of your taste for petite Asian women with hair you can pull. I could give zero fucks about the place you offer me in your anthology. I hollow myself out so you can eat me out. I am a poet and you will appear in a poem. Except we do not speak ill of the dead. You’ll have to come back for the dead-dad poems another night, if I agree to it. But the thing about being a poet in Wellington is that we might bump into each other at the supermarket in our most uncrafted selves. I love how you reach the tall things for me. Maybe you’re here tonight and this is how you learn my name. I’m sorry, I only have five minutes. I’ll let myself out.

Ya-Wen Ho is a letterpress printmaker, graphic designer and poet living in Matairangi, Te Whanganui-a-Tara. A Taipei-born New Zealander, she works bilingually between Mandarin and English, merging the two languages in performance. Literary awards include a Horoeka/Lancewood Reading Grant (2015) and the Ema Saiko Poetry Fellowship at New Zealand Pacific Studio (2016).