Ally Ang

🌙Runner-Up to the 2021 Blongprize🌙

There’s Nothing Sexy About Wanting to Die

Not the handfuls of Cheez-Its 
(zesty parmesan!) that I ate for dinner
for the past seven nights in a row, 

or the way that each day congeals
in my memory into a milky 
gelatinous mass of Nothing,

or the thick musky scent of the tampon
I’m too apathetic to change. It’s all 
so boring, it makes me want 

to puke. It makes me want to tongue kiss
the toilet bowl or eat my own
placenta. I would just like to rot 

in peace, but there are emails demanding
to be avoided and texts to ignore.
I scroll until my eyes melt, then scroll

some more. In the search bar, I type
“Asian women fucking,” just to see
a person who looks like me

being touched. My nipples grow hard
with envy, like two rusty flagpoles
colonizing my chest, while I watch me

make love to myself. Why are you eroticizing
your depression? my therapist asks again,
and I orgasm in reply. Just kidding—

the Zoloft has made my cunt
so numb, it’s basically dead 
meat. As useless 

as the rest of me. Look, I don’t know how
to bear all of this—the stale grain 
of rice clinging to my lower lip,

the glow of the SAD lamp staining 
my sallow skin—but I want to want
to live long enough to see

my houseplants grow. In the video, the women
cum in choreographed unison. I watch
as my fern sheds another leaf.

Anti-Ode to Girlhood

Before I was a girl, I was an accusation. A bad 
omen. A piece of gum stuck to the bottom 
of my mother’s boot. As hard as her body tried 
to scrape me off, I would not budge. Like any good 
daughter, I learned the art of swallowing
my humiliation. Lowered my gaze in reverence
of older girls, eavesdropped on their bathroom
whisperings, drunk off the secondhand thrill
of their first tentative touches. Kept my hair long 
and my fingernails trimmed. Waited faithfully
for God to reach their divine hand between my legs 
and make Something happen, but all that came 
to me was a lack of breasts and a burgeoning must-
ache. O girlhood, I shapeshifted my way
into denim skirts and AOL chatrooms searching
for you, glittery blue shadow coating my eyelids
and bleach stinging my upper lip. In line
for the drugstore checkout, I snuck glances
at glossy magazine covers, memorizing headlines
like scripture (50 Things He HATES About Your Body!)
then tallying my body’s failures in front 
of the mirror. Night after night, I placed 
a tampon under my pillow in the hopes 
that someday, I, too might bleed. O girlhood,
each grueling excision, each pang of hunger
gnawing at my insides, it was all 
in your name. 

Dentistry

Clean as a Clorox-wiped countertop. 
No cavities
in your sinless mouth. You prefer your grapes
free of seeds, your orange juice 
without pulp. At the breakfast table
you pull one of my hairs out 
from between your teeth, a keratin thread
of dental floss, and wish on it
before you let it fall. I want
to kiss you then, but you’re already late
for work and you don’t want to smudge
my lipstick. At night, I listen 
to you brushing your teeth, bristles furious
against enamel. In my cup of chamomile
a single black hair clings to porcelain. 
A tiny coiled phone cord. I fish it out 
with the tip of my thumbnail.