The Kingdom of Surfaces: Poems by Sally Wen Mao

Author:Sally Wen Mao [Mao, Sally Wen]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Graywolf Press
Published: 2023-09-15T00:00:00+00:00

The Lion and the Unicorn

As if by magic, the distance between East and West, spanning perspectives that are often perceived as monolithic and diametrically opposed, diminishes. So, too, does the association of the East with the natural and the authentic and the West with the cultural and the simulacrum.

Dresses from the exhibition float behind glass, alive with beating hearts. The Chinese objects, too, are living—I hear their pulses. Each object has a label: ROMANTIC. ENIGMATIC. MYSTICAL. The throne of the Empress Dowager holds its breath. In front of its display, a Lion and a Unicorn are sparring. The Unicorn bites off a chunk of the Lion’s mane. The Lion mauls the Unicorn, scratching its left eye.

Fabulous monster, the Unicorn calls Alice when it first sets its eyes on her in Through the Looking Glass. Alice responds I always thought unicorns were fabulous monsters, too! Their pact was simple: If you’ll believe in me, I’ll believe in you. But in the corridor where I stand there looking, all I muster is a purr or a whimper. Against my better judgment, I scramble the other way, toward the dresses. The first dress is a yellow sequined gown by Tom Ford from the 2004–2005 Yves Saint Laurent collection. I remember the qipao tops sold in 2004 for $12.99 a pop at the Westfield Valley Fair mall in San Jose, California. How they embarrassed me: to wear them is to wear a cheap version of your heritage, the source of your shame.

The second piece, a pink silk jacquard coat embroidered with polychrome silk thread, is by John Galliano for House of Dior, autumn/winter 1998–99 Haute Couture collection. Of his inspiration, Galliano says: Before I visited China, it was the fantasy that drew me to it, the sense of danger and mystery. The price of incandescence—more than plenitudes of money or blood or desire. Despite my horror, I covet. I covet draping the garments over my eyes, I covet their caress. How silk stretches against skin, a tactile intimacy akin to protection.

The third piece is a dress donated by Anna May Wong herself, a black silk charmeuse gown embroidered with a gold sequin dragon, designed by Travis Banton in 1934. She wore this dress in the film Limehouse Blues.

The dresses speak in unison: Wear me. Wear me. Wear me. I walk inside the glass vitrine of the dress I choose. Anna May’s face peers down at me from its ceiling: a black-and-white image of her raising her arms, her hands over her eyes. As I touch the charmeuse, the dragon stitched into the dress slips out of its seams, roaring into three-dimensionality. It tears the Lion to shreds. It tears the Unicorn to shreds. Oh, my sight burns! It is a thing to behold: the gleaming golden serpent with blood on its teeth. Before I could scream, it brands me with hot pokers—its mouth finds the back of my neck. I try to scream—then fall into a river leading to the main exhibition hall. Pain mushrooms into numbness.

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