Triple Sonnet for Dragons Spitting Out Pearls

My best friend’s fish is pregnant again,
and I think about my aunt in Hong Kong
who releases fish back into the ocean
once a year, buying them from restaurants
boasting their seafood in tanks—feng shui,
because if your restaurant’s got one arowana,
translated from Chinese as “the dragon fish
spits out the pearl,” it’ll do fine, but with two,
pearls and pearls will rain down your meals,
getting caught in oysters and abalone and lobster,
and isn’t seafood so beautiful in this greatest
music video of all time starring your arowana,
oh arowana, you dimepiece of a fish, let me
write odes for you, how you inspire

black market bad boys and girls, and calling
all supervillains, it’s time to unite, don
those eyepatches, because the arowana
can be trained like a cat or a dog
by your side, and though it’s caged
in a tank, it’s a dragon—a damn dragon
that’ll let you take over the world,
breathing fire, spitting out pearls,
and my aunt stares at tanks of seafood
in Kowloon, and of course, she can’t afford
an arowana, a six-digit-cost-display-
inside-like-a-Manet-painting-on-a-gilded-
gold-plane, so she buys regular fish citizens,
releasing them back into water,

giving new meaning to spa days of fish
eating away at your dead skin—the Buddhist
lifestyle of giving back, and oh, how I wish
my best friend’s gold fish was pregnant
with an arowana—maybe mommy goldfish
could first grow fifty times its size,
a superhero giving birth to a supervillain,
and yes, I know it’s impossible, but just
just imagine those pearls and pearls raining

on enough meals to feed everyone
in Hong Kong, and I think about all the little
boys and girls staring at tanks outside
of restaurants, trying to grab onto a lobster tail—
the adventure—give me some pearls—and fire.

Triple Sonnet, Because Let’s Record Ourselves Eat and Make Love

All I want for the holidays is a mukbang,
the way dreamboat British Youtubers
sit around with pizza and wine on video,
and give me spicy pepperoni and sausage—
have you heard that chefs in LA now use
salad as a pizza topping—what blasphemy,
because meat is sex, like how I love straddling
men with broad shoulders, and abs abs abs,
oh you, British heartthrobs, Koreans invented
the mukbang, and let me break it to you:
Asians will out-eat you white boys every day,
because we were born and raised to devour
family hot pot and dim sum and ten-course
meals, and pass the skewers and sesame wings—

you might as well pay me to eat since it’s in
my genes, a power that traces back centuries
from respecting our grandparents and every dish
brought to the family table, and just pile on
the steamed shrimp with ginger, and spicy ramen
with eggs and seaweed, and extra hot pepper
paste on my bibimbap, let me down Tiger
beer, and no, I don’t turn red—you do, and yes,
small Asian girl eating is the fetish of our times—
let me scare you, oh white boy, transform
into a one-eyed monster whose head erupts
into a volcano every time she gobbles something
spicy, and do you want more hot pepper paste—
you can’t handle it, but let’s keep playing

mukbang, because isn’t it such a fun game,
and think about those monsters in anime
who eat everything in sight then grow
ten more stomachs, and pass the green tea
doughnuts and mont blanc cakes and mochi
red bean ice cream, because food is sex,
and all I want is a naughty video
for the holidays recorded, rewind, replayed:
food, sex, survival, and surveillance,

growing more stomachs and making love,
eating squid—tentacles out of my mouth,
octopus porn come to life, feast before
your eyes on video, and oh, the mukbang:
eat, eat, sex, sex—let’s be naughty—come here.