“Hookup App” and Other Poems by Daniel W.K. Lee

Queen
By Daniel W.K. Lee

Naruki Kukita - Hoichi the earless, Oil on panel, 20x16in (2019) 
Image description: A portrait of a somber young Asian man sitting on the ground with his knees tucked to his chest while he peers over his right shoulder. He is naked and is only wearing a fundoshi, which is a traditional Japanese undergarment for adult males, made from a length of cotton. His whole body, including his face, has Kanji characters written all over. 

I was groomed to want
headless white bodies
along men’s underwear aisles
in discount department stores.
Long before the world’s imagination
got between Marky Mark
and his Calvins, an off brand
athletic thong modeled
in grayscale dilated these eyes.
Was it all a blur or that hip
meeting upper thigh just the Great Plains
of pelvis for public view?

For a boy in the early chunky years,
would I one day swell
and cast such a chest?
Could I too fill the pouch
to breathlessness?
For a boy with no allowance,
how did I end up deflated
in a red pair of my own,
looking nothing like my lust—
that chessboard display
of the decapitated
sunned to harvest wheat.

Yesteryear’s is today’s
is tomorrow’s window shopping.
Hook up app on any street, alley, or aisle.
Only white guys get away with
parading     cum gutters
in squared touchscreen.
Same game, different board. 
Like a queen, I slide in all directions
in conquest—
even over those pale pawns
erased above the chin
I swear
—swore —
need to be more.

Naruki Kukita - Contact, Oil on canvas, 12x16in (2016)
Image description: A monochromatic portrait of a man going down on someone while he peers up as though watching the person he is going down on. The painting also has light splatters of red and blue all over the image. 

Hookup App
By Daniel W.K. Lee

If I were
actually headless,

just torso and below
rendered chiseled
and convincing
by bathroom light,
maybe the onlookers
would let the porno
unfold: genuflecting

between
my knees; tongues
taking the host; 
my ass: the cathedral
they crave entrance;

and like heaven
depends on it,
pretend 

that upon the tap—
this face avowed— 
the hard-ons don’t die
at the wink

of an almond eye. 

Naruki Kukita - Splash, Oil on canvas, 22x12in (2014)
Image description: An upside-down portrait of a green-eyed Caucasian man lying on his back. His mouth is open while semen is ejaculated and dripping over the man’s face. Light white splatters are flicked onto the whole image, the densest splatters censoring the penises in frame. 

Homecoming
By Daniel W.K. Lee

after The Hanging Garden

Do the bluets still bloom below
where I left our adolescence dangling
like a wind chime from the backyard tree?

Someone waiting for blossoms must have said, 
“Some things never change,” watched
Sweet William’s variegated eyes open in June—

after all, that’s how we got our name.
Remember? Mountain laurel climbed the sky
in August, not September; Papi backhanded 

our mistaken cheeks, letting tears water the rosemary, 
but then traded them for ice cream—
two scoops their bribe’s worth. 

You stayed hung there, overseeing the garden
with your irises shuttered, in your best 
and only suit—the crimson shirt still crisp 

like winter and the grief clipping your breath 
like a sun-dried leaf. All that embalming pain is how 
you’ve stayed unspoiled—even with Papi’s sobbing

a messy penance at your navel—
since I martyred you to barter for
something, somewhere else, worth living for.

You, unbearably fourteen, obese with resignation 
and our secret bruises: before I leave this house 
of wasted perennials, I will bury you. 

Everyone else loved you far too much to free
the noose and lay you down like a seed, feared 
discovering a failure to furnish roots in this soil. 

Do not be afraid, young man, you have long not been living. 
And when you are finally under this ground, 
we won’t care when flowers grow.

---

Daniel W.K. Lee is a third-generation refugee, queer, Cantonese American born in Kuching, Malaysia. He earned his MFA in Creative Writing at The New School, and his debut collection of poetry, Anatomy of Want, was published by QueerMojo/Rebel Satori Press. Daniel lives in New Orleans with this head-turning whippet Camden. Find out more about him at danielwklee.com

*

Naruki Kukita is a contemporary figurative artist. Kukita was born in Japan and currently lives in New York City. Kukita received a BFA from Tama Art University in Tokyo and has attended the Art Students League and the National Academy School of Fine Arts in NYC. Kukita has participated in many exhibitions and gallery shows, and the artist’s work has been published in Velvet Magazine, Gayletter magazine, Spank Magazine, Mary, Tri-State Magazine and more.

---

---

If you’ve enjoyed reading this article, please consider making a donation. Your donation goes towards paying our contributors and a modest stipend to our editors. Singapore Unbound is powered by volunteers, and we depend on individual supporters. To maintain our independence, we do not seek or accept direct funding from any government.