I saw a girl online
Singing Rape Me by Nirvana while squinting
at the camera, obviously sexual in intention &
doing a pretty good job of it too, with all that
shaded-lip type sensuality turned on full blast.
Before I could say something about artistic
intent & how Kurt Cobain would never approve
of this—shame on you, shame on you—she turned
her full body to the camera. She wanted us to see
her tits, but it was her eyes I was looking at.
Wide & red-ringed, mascara smudged like
someone had slapped it on & then off her. You’d
have expected someone like her to look much
worse. You’d have called her a young woman.
Half of the comments were righteous Nirvana
defenders & the other half were emoji-loaded
bots trying to get her to call them Daddy. You
know, like the Sylvia Plath poem. You’re such
an intellectual, I bet you could even turn her, the
girl with the fuck-me eyes & hurt-me lips, into
a Madonna. That’s what you want me to say
about this whole ordeal. & no, I won’t send you
the link. This isn’t just about us. It never was.
*
Kate Choi is a creative writer from Seoul, South Korea. An alumna of the Iowa Young Writers’ Studio, Kenyon Young Writers Workshop, and Adroit Summer Mentorship, her work is published or forthcoming in Rust & Moth, The SHORE Poetry, manywor(l)ds, and more. She works as a poetry reader for Ploughshares and wildscape literary. You can find her online at katechoi.carrd.co
