Poetry: “Yang Gui-Fei Fresh Off Potomac Avenue” by Rongfei Mu
What might catch one’s attention immediately in “Yang Gui-Fei Fresh Off Potomac Avenue” is the bold persona and distinct voice captured in its lines. While Yang Gui-Fei lived and died hundreds of years ago, she speaks anew with a modern, direct tone to her voice, a tone which must be given a similarly direct focus. With closer reading, the lament, the grief—those quieter aspects of anger in response to injustice—come to the surface, especially in the line “got sunburnt for the second time but / i loved it,” followed by a direct address to the speaker’s brother, a turn toward an epistolary tenderness. The ghost of Yang Gui-Fei, made alive again, reclaims the her powers of “bewitching beauty” and “corrupting influence” in the poem’s closing lines. This poem has a content notice for a mention of suicide.
Read Mu’s poetry below.
Yang Gui-Fei Fresh Off Potomac Avenue
“bewitching beauty and corrupting influence.” when the emperor’s neglect of governance
caused the an lushan rebellion, yang gui fei—his scapegoat—was forced to hang herself with a silk scarf.
to stop torching all that it touches up in flames, greedy little fingers
just like every semi-important politician i’ve slept with.
stumbled from the pole to the state house and back.
tossed out the opal studs he got me when
i fed myself to men who claimed to be gods. got down
on my knees in the B&B and strung my soul out across the floor,
all 5’6” of it. scrubbed, scrubbed, scrubbed for hours,
scalp to foot soles, to peel off his gaze under piss yellow lights.
turned myself inside out for some quarters, then rode the line
down to the potomac, got sunburnt for the second time but
i loved it. brother, you should’ve seen him screaming.
seven missed calls till he sent for me. i’m the disaster,
i’m the war, dark calamity in a peach blossom dress. if i’m
a witch, at least let me have my eight-inch stilettos,
black as nylon. don’t you think that’s about right, baby?
got off the station to find washington in flames, he blames it
on me. threw a cheap polyester scarf 80% off retail so i
looped it around a streetlight and stripped for the passerby.
Rongfei Mu
Rongfei Mu is from Beijing and continues to be in love with all forms of storytelling. Her poems can be found on Palette Poetry, The Jet Fuel Review, The Shore, Rust + Moth, The West Trestle Review, and elsewhere.
