To Fetishists (to Hunters)

to fetishists (to hunters)

by Amber Irish

to the man who knows he is an

asian fetishist but

knows less that

he is a hunter:

when you tell me that asian

women are your “thing,”

smiling at me with all your 

shiny teeth,

i do not get upset. 

even when the 

unsolicited details of your 

harajuku-sailor-moon-costumed

geisha-trained, yellow-fevered

how-much-for-a-happy-ending

fantasy drips from your mouth like gasoline

because i'm too

busy imagining

you on top of me

the way hunters

pose on Bengal tiger rugs,

bullet shells spilling from their laughing mouths,

smoke curling around their lips,

like you think

i am nothing

more than a 

trophy of skin,

my mouth an open invitation

for the jawbreaker in you

to pry me apart and cut my face

into an enduring smile,

because you hate that i have a hundred different ways to 

tell you to go 

but never once

beg you to cum 

like your movies and fathers and history books told you i would. 

told you i should. 

i am nothing 

but the emptied

remains of a

beast waiting to

be filled by your greedy, 

selfish fingers

the careless hands of a sloppy

taxidermist, an amateur pushed elbow deep inside, 

throwing out the stuff men 

like you have no use for:

    the guts the brain the heart

hastily replacing it with something meant to

keep me immobile and quiet 

    lead and steel and gunpowder. 

you throw me on the floor, 

a glass-eyed, split-bellied

souvenir to wipe your feet on when you return from another

gruesome hunt as if to say:

     this one is mine, too. 

and i want to say that men like you don’t matter. 

i want to tell you that i am nothing 

for you. 

no fever or jaw for you to break,

no broken beast who serves the pretty purpose of lying down with a carved smile

in your bed 

or underfoot 

i want to tell you that i am no 

thing. 

but you smell like smoke. 

you are all ego. 

you are all consumption and greed and rage.

you are a fetishist, a hunter.

you are a hoarder, a collector

a collection of compulsion and obsession and weakness. 

you are a butcher. a flesher. 

a poacher. a slaughterer. 

every synonym

your language has for 

killer. 

you are every tantrum and

fit and outburst

fanned into firestorm 

racing across generations,

destroying anything it cannot 

keep. 

and we have come to learn that 

by the time we smell smoke,

it’s already too late. 

---

to fetishists (to hunters) was the first poem I wrote connecting racist fetishism to violence and dehumanization of Asian American women. It’s almost five years old. But honestly, this poem has never felt finished. I wanted to tie the ending up prettily and positively, in an attempt to reclaim dimensional culture and personality that’s often dismissed by phrases like “Asian women are my thing.” But that ending always felt hollow. And the more I interact with people, the more I realize, it’s not dismissing just one man or person or phrase. It’s dismissing, and more importantly, dismantling systemic oppressions every single day in every corner of our shared history and culture. Being a woman of color in this country is to live at an intersection of racism and misogyny. And it is exhausting.

The increased violence against AAPI and the recent events in Georgia on March 16 made me realize wanting our own positive and pretty endings doesn’t ensure them. Too often it feels like women, femmes, BIPOC and LGBTQ-identifying people are punished for merely existing. We have to get better. Check in on your family and friends, but check in on yourself, too.

- Amber