follow him
in yr best light you were still
extremely wasteful: smeared yr secretions
everywhere & showed parts of you
nonconsensually: are you still
trying to get people to talk about you?
will you sleep over in this economy?
i will smash anything with you
long as i am correctly quoted:
“rn my life is v nicely 2/3 marxism-
leninism & the living struggle
& 1/3 reading my horoscope at 2am,
thinking about my love life”
there’s plenty that can’t be said
& yes yes I know visibility is a trap
yes yes I know everyone here
is vibrating through some truly ugly notes
yes yes ok yup I have never uttered a thought
to someone who hadn’t already thought it:
yes sure it is easiest to mock the sincere:
war is corny & revolution threatens
irony, still I want my soft sockets
touched & refuse to give birth
heartlessly: I won’t budge on wanting love:
human touch: not everything
has to be profitable
“open letter to my facebook friends
who voted for Jill Stein:
unfriend me now, I don’t care
if we’ve known each other for ten years!
delete me from your friend list!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!”
at this point my life is very nicely
2/3 wishing I were dead and 1/3
wishing I was never born
tbh your problems won’t go away
just bc you finally acknowledged yr own
longstanding depression:
the survivor mentality never worked
for me but then again I haven’t lived
thru much: “it happened to me:
I dated a white anarchist
who made me do all the dishes
while he crowdfunded his trip to Rojava”
sigh:: another white boy fight club:
all the world’s pain is not enough raw material
for them to feel something:
“it’s actually insanely good to hurt bad people”
what’s the difference between looking for a bar fight
& looking for someone to liberate
after reading about Democratic Confederalism?
I’m not sure but the first dood overdosed
after getting into the Whitney
the second guy got clean and found someone
to profile him:: sigh:: these bros
would sooner tape their own suicide
than fail to leave a legacy
no man has ever been remembered
for doing what their mothers did
for them: feeding the hungry
without credit: “war changes u…
two weeks ago I was an idealist…
now all I desire is Wi-FI good enough
for 30 seconds of Bang Bus”
the socialist dream means Rolling Stone
will never write about the women
waiting at home: me and my friends can’t wait
to be a footnote* our whole lives condensed
into a line* it’s no wonder some lumpenproletariat
got so tired of browsing Tumblr
they joined the Kurdish militia*
there’s even an economy of Iraqi cabbies
who wait for white guys to land*
“I think I’m a famous leftist now”*
“did one of you make a wiki page for me”*
I know this type better than I know
myself* all the world’s tragedies
a stage to put his ideals into action*
all the pain in the universe raw material
for his Nihilist Pornography* Anarchist Puppet
Show* Camgirl Intifada* Neo Dadaist Vision of Hentai
Morphology* Tentacle Necronumen* Futanari Dentata***
Fanservice: no matter what is happening
no matter who is mourning no matter where
the droughts may be no matter which island
is being slowly submerged underwater
no matter which union leader was assassinated
in broad daylight no matter which community
has come together to mourn the endless dead
he still manages to make it about himself
he’s into YPG women
who carry rifles by their butts
in his RPG past he killed a lot of strippers
he’s one of the rare few
who have come back
~virtually~
~*untouched*~
the innocent slain needs him alive
the army needs him alive
the unnamed dead need him alive
the Reddit users need him alive
everywhere he goes a Kurdish fighter
steps first
denying him the right
to fear anything
he came all the way to Syria
to care about something
for *once*
and still the wretched of the world
bend over backwards
to die before him
what’s it like to have so many people
invested in your existence?
those of us who knew him in NY & SF
are stuck archiving footage of him snorting
ketamine with neo Marxists who don’t like it
when you critique their anti-capitalist critique
of prostitution within the framework of
shameless anti-feminist-settler-colonialism—
I mean, okay… no one likes to hear that!
the real struggle as defined by an ex-junkie
beta male missing a core…
I thought literally everyone knew
fight club was really about brad pitt
desiring edward norton… like these two men
burned so much for each other
they had to keep making excuses to touch…
it’s absolutely true some white guys
would rather fight ISIS…
than be called a racist online!
anyone else nodding like yup yup yup yup?
anyone else vomited in daddy’s lap
and forgot to share it with their fans?
you must really live for the state
of emergency: “we are here at home”:
I don’t think everything happens out there
on the streets: who u used to be vs
who u have become: carrying the banner
of any idea: reparations, restorative justice,
prison abolition: “I dwell in possibility”:
abandoning yr family to take up arms
somehow becomes beyond reproach:
so much is the opposite of glory;
that’s why the women in my family
tested the lowest for morality: 1973
was not good to us: cancer in your 12th house
means your “secret sorrow” is hot + buried
but what passes as flirtation online
doesn’t work analog: the same white guy
whose facebook posts I screenshot
lectures me on how my people really lived
under Mao: “did you actually fall
for that rightest propaganda?” I don’t know
exactly but I know I don’t wanna drive across town
to barter ingredients for your cruelty-free dinner
okay maybe I am consumed by rage
and inflict it on the people around me!
but I swear his beliefs are genuinely suspect
why is it always around dinner-time
that his interest in the no-work movement kicks in?
“you only work as much as is needed—no one
is coerced!” suddenly the new world order
flashed before my eyes—my people naturally
(free of coercion!) took up cooking, serving,
& cleaning without complaint and your people
took to feasting with a clean conscience—
“all of this given voluntarily!
each one takes according to need!
offers according to want!”
well life is rich and wanting to be someone
is very different from worrying abt the mothers
of the world who have given birth to men
who literally cannot feel—
even in death
even in fame
even when we beg them
to worry about something
other than how
they might die
having done nothing
worth noting
Note: This piece was originally written for and performed at Symphony Space's Selected Shorts: Flash Fiction event in partnership with BuzzFeed Books.
Jenny Zhang is the author of the forthcoming short story collection Sour Heart, and the poetry collection Dear Jenny, We Are All Find.
To learn more about Sour Heart, click here.