POEM OF THE MONTH
October
Fear
Asian Cowgirl Just Wants a Drink (And Maybe Also Your Body and Soul)
My face card only declines at bars south
of the river. Something about my slant-like
eyes makes ‘em all think I’m just one bad day
away from eating their dog, downing
that poor chained-up chump in a single
sorry gulp. Can somebody tell this brute boot
that I’m the real fuckin’ deal? Can you bring me
my mud-stamped papers? And if those don’t work,
then my God-given gun? It’s true, I shoot. This gun’s
got rabbit pelts for bullets. Now be smothered
in a choking softness. Fuck a bar and a bouncer.
It’s been more than forever since I had y’all over.
Let’s be porch props, silhouettes sat on folding chairs,
the single yellow light. Have your summers been unspooling
as slow as mine? Before you answer, sides lanced into water,
let me pour you two fingers of spirit for the big hit. A pillar
of smoke on the side. If Jesus saves, consider me nowhere close
to being canned and in the pantry. If life begins at conception,
consider me swearing since that first cellular division.
Shoot. I called 1-800-TRUTH, no shit I did, twice a day
for seven years and nobody picked up. Tell me, are you
the same? Shh, stay awhile, have another golden flask
of ghosts and gardens. Closer. Let me tell you something.
The roadside porn stores are inevitable and shambling
and somewhere in the aisles I’m being fed my daily
quarters. Give me my metallic wafer with red wine to wash
it down and I’ll do my best slitted, slender-dress dance.
When I’m done it’s another twenty and your trust
for a kiss. Enough people told me I was femme
and fatal and finally I believed them. But let’s ge
this straight: if I’m yours, you’ve got to admit
I’m American: my own best weapon, my own worst
confession. I can even be your wife for a season.
I’ll take you sledding in the hilly graveyards
like I did when I was nineteen and still seamless.
I’ll slot your body between my knees and lean back
‘til gravity takes us, and takes us, and takes us,
but before we go down, one last admission:
I really do believe that the dead lie tilted
beneath the ground, bodies following
the earth’s curve, their arms folded for a sleek, inertia-
prone profile. We can go where they go, you got it baby,
just wrap me round your shoulders like a mother-
made scarf and for the love of all things holy, hold the hell on.
Kimberly Ramos is a Filipina writer from Southern Missouri. They are currently a graduate student of philosophy at Brown University. They have been previously published in Northwest Review, Black Warrior Review, and Quarterly West, among others. They dream of becoming a giant rabbit and haunting the Midwest.
What does it mean to fear? What does it mean to be feared? How does fear interact with belonging and safety in rural America? I wrote this poem shortly after two events: the presidential debate, and a personal break-up.
After the presidential debate, I was on edge for a few days because my father, a visibly Filipino man, rides his bike to work. I was worried that someone might see this as an opportunity to hurt him after Former President Trump’s inflammatory remarks during the debate. I was once again reminded that much of the experience of being "Other" in my predominantly white hometown is one of fear—but as much as I fear for my safety as a femme-presenting Asian person, I've found that rural America fears me, too. Former President Trump's fear mongering about immigrants consuming dogs in Springfield, OH, is one such instance of Otherness and the bidirectional nature of fear. Fear becomes a strange, contradictory power that each party holds over the other.
After my break-up, I started thinking about the notion of dating again. But dating opens up a Pandora’s Box of hyper-awareness: Does this person find me attractive, or do they merely fetishize what they think I represent? Should I go home with this person, or will they hurt me? How should I read this person’s friendliness? Fear rears its two-faced head here, too: I've found that as much as I fear for my body's sexual safety, my sexuality is at times a weapon or means of leverage. Many of my adult romantic relationships have been spent unpacking these tensions. The title’s “Asian Cowgirl” is an assertion of agency as much as it is a tongue-in-cheek lamentation.
I believe that fear, at its core, is about vulnerability. Depending on who you are with, vulnerability can be terrifying or wonderful—at times, both. I have tried to capture that instability in this poem.
Kimberly’s “Asian Cowgirl Just Wants a Drink (And Maybe Also Your Body and Soul)” is brilliant for many reasons. I love how intricately it explores the dance between fear and power, defiance and vulnerability, belonging and otherness. I love how the poem wields humor as a weapon and a shield, from its playful title to lines like “Can somebody tell this brute boot / that I’m the real fuckin’ deal?” This isn’t just clever wordplay we’re witnessing, but a survival strategy. “Enough people told me I was femme / and fatal and finally I believed them.” The way the poem handles fear is remarkable, and what truly elevates this piece is its brilliant navigation of power dynamics. The poem builds to that extraordinary ending where intimacy and danger become indistinguishable: “just wrap me round your shoulders like a mother- / made scarf and for the love of all things holy, hold the hell on.” This is a poem that refuses to be contained by others’ expectations while acknowledging the very real weight of those expectations.
.avif)
.avif)
.avif)
.png)
.avif)
