Triple Sonnet for Celebrities with Three Names
By Dorothy Chan
For Josh
If you’ve got three names and you’re famous
does that mean three times the amount of fucking?
I daydream about my ideal lovers and hearing
Cut! when the director tells us to switch positions
on the set of our bedroom, and what’s a bigger
turn-on than someone saying your name under
the covers—how about saying your name three
times, and oh, fuck, fucking, fuckest—yeah that’s
a superlative, like the Beetlejuice effect, only
freakier, like let’s get transported into the house
I built in a simulation game where my avatar
seduced then killed the richest man for the sake
of inheriting then remodeling his mansion into
her dream of glass windows in every room—
the pleasure of always watching what’s going
on, and I swear, I’m a really nice girl. I really
am. Just say the magic word, and I’m all yours,
and surveys reveal that the word lovers wished
their lovers said more is “please,” and I wonder
if please is short for pleasure, as in eat your girl
right, as in I’ll order a clitty clitty bang bang at
a midnight viewing, as in please let me put on
a show for you, as in I love any event with a ton
of cameras, as in keep feeding me macarons
while you’re feeling me up in the bath, and if
I was a celebrity, I’d tack my middle initial
K back into my name for extra effect, my secret
K, as in Ka-Ying, as in white boys will you
stop calling me by my middle name because
you think speaking Cantonese will bring us
closer, and it’s ironic how an actual lover
adds in the K every time she says my full
name, and she says it with such authority it’s
a turn-on, like, Baby, say my full name again
and I’ll record you, why don’t you, K?
K is for kink. K is for knot. K is for kissing,
K is for king. Crown me. And don’t fool me
by saying Queen, because I know where all
my power lies. And K is for knock me down
and pin me down on the grass, lover, because
you on me is the closest to nature I’m ever getting.
Source: Poetry (January 2021)