The HyperTexts

Victoria Lau

Victoria Lau is currently working on her MFA degree at Lindenwood University. She was the 3rd place poetry winner for the Random House Creative Writing Competition in 2013. Her poems have been published in Rogue Agent, The Orchards Poetry Journal and The Olivetree Review. She was also the 1st place winner for the Nancy Dean Medieval Prize in 2020. She is a poetry reader for GASHER Journal and one of the marketing coordinators for The Adroit Journal. She has taught poetry at Sadie Nash Summer Institute and is writing assistant at the Borough of Manhattan Community College Writing Center and an English adjunct lecturer at Queens College.



Ghazal of the Purity Myth

Roses are red, violets are blue—immature love.
Cupid made me stupid for you, for sure, Love!

But I made a pledge to Big Daddy,
to never be randy: “True love waits”—pure love.

I was taught only good girls would get prince charming:
My greatest gift for you, my hymen intact to be worthy of your love.

I was taught boys will be boys, but I must
never do a thing, until a ring is secure. Love.

I was taught girls must be sexy, but not sexual.
My first diet at age 11—I was so insecure, Luv.

I was taught to say no to cake, but not to men
who think my body's theirs, de jure. Love?

When I said, “no,” I was negged and abused:
called a “cunt” and “bitch”: what I've had to endure. “Love.”

If I'm pressured into saying, “yes,”
I'll be labeled: a slut, ho, easy, that kind of girl—impure love.

I'm screwed if I do, screwed if I don't: eternally stuck
in between Scylla and Charybdis—it's (pure) torture! Love, Victoria.

 

Ubi Sunt Ballade of Heroines

—After François Villon's “The Ballad of Dead Ladies”

Where's Queen Pasiphae, her homemade magical Viagra
for her unfaithful husband? (Magna cum
laude!) In each lover, a niagara
of scorpions-and-millipedes-cum
ejaculated by that scum.
Medea? La Llorona? Who's more feared?
No one's number two, rule of thumb.
But where are the love-vigilante of yester-year?

Where’s Judith? Holofernes’ head,
mead-filled, on a silver platter.
Christina, who chose Christ to wed,
whose heart, not one to be flattered.
Her will, her resolve, unshattered. 
Mystical castration, revered—
Women who stood for what mattered. 
But where are the survivors of yester-year?

Clever Penelope, her never-ending shroud;
Philomela's tapestry, her Proto-Me-Too
story woven, what she couldn't say out loud:
thread formed words, blood: violent hues.
Scheherazade's cliff-hangers that got her through
1,001 nights. The strength in Mulan; the fire in Jane Eyre.
Portia's defiance: for her love, the final clue.
Where's Greda facing the Snow Queen of yester-year?

I call upon you, Calliope, for inspired words,
a room of one's own for this Judith Shakespeare,
connected: you and me, an ink-ebbing umbilical cord.
But where are the poets of yester-year?



Erasure Sestina: Disposing the Evidence

After Lawrence Schimel

Spending time with me
became a crime that you didn't want your mom to catch you commit,
so you got rid of the evidence:
#1: The “Get Well Soon” balloon
that I bought for you. #2: The pop-up birthday
card that I made you. #3: My cats' fur.

You used a lint roller to remove my cats' fur,
afraid your mom would run a fiber analysis on your clothes and find traces of me.
You let your mom throw out the pop-up birthday
card I made for you, clearing out all traces of my commitment
to you. Before your mom came to the hospital, you hid my “Get Well Soon” balloon.
The evidence.

All my heart's work floated away like a lost balloon.
Your mom was allergic to cat fur
like you were to commitments,
yet you claimed you love me.
My hand-crafted pop-up birthday card.

You and your mom blamed me.
Everything kept bottling up until finally you popped the balloon
and the idealized image of you that I was committed to.
My cats' fur.

In our so called committed
relationship, I lost a part of me.
My “Get Well Soon” balloon.

You got rid of me.

Originally published in Volume 17, Issue #1 of The Road Not Taken: A Journal of Formal Poetry



The HyperTexts