Lian Sing

The Dressing Room

A tri-fold mirror, a-ha, clever door

where swing the hips, mmm, keeping score

pendulum of I, “uh-huh”, sex sublime

“unzip me, you”—me—ooh!—reptilian eye

step from the fabric pool, puff, (hala) voila,

who to be, tick-tick: “ashen, bruha”

“ooh la la, Cinderella” “eggshell, Little Owl”

ah, shift dress, scale, feathers, dagger, crown

several stockings, clay legs “whatd’ya think?”

sigh, but Charybdisian eyes hiss minx!

a body “a body” not a graph, tch, scheme

vortex, mhm, of three thousand dreams

to bind in jacket, zip posture, capsule pill

bear this thunder “hunter” ha—who else will?

I spin me carnival hum-hum coming storm

“release me” oh hold me! my prism form

“so which is it?” wardrobe of woe, wit, woah

a glove each itch: one candlewax, one stone

alarms ring ring ring heirloom diamond ring

I catch myself pondering flesh, “my”, like thing

watched “we are” duh and invisible too

allow me please lounge “coo coo” (my cocoon)

planetary cobwebs haaay worms in the seams

I just wish to walk clap! skip down the street

what madness drives us to lacquer skin sheen

“we are blue” “then arrrumble” gazes back at me

over the shoulder gorgonian eyes zing wink

choose “ache” “va va bloom” “take your pink”

smile bite bang in strappy heels what can I say

around are tender apparitions hush hey unafraid

alas of life and atoms “I know very little”

only that inside of me, e, e (a death beetle)

Born and raised in Manila, Lian Sing currently lives in central Texas. Her first chapbook Revelations (Factory Hollow Press, 2024) won the 2023 Tomaž Šalamun Prize, and her writing has previously appeared in digital and print publications like Black Warrior Review, Guernica, Meridian, Quarter After Eight, Journal of Southeast Asian Ecocriticism, and elsewhere.