“I like you. But not as much as I like self-portrait island love poems.” by Eric Wang.

First prize poetry winner of the Hart House Literary Contest in 2020 was Eric Wang, a student at UTSC pursuing a major in English and creative writing.

This is what the judges – poets Prathna Lor, Kate Cayley and Ingrid Ruthig – said about Wang’s poem:

“Our winning poem, ‘I like you. But not as much as I like self-portrait island love poems’, is an exquisite lesson in playful self-love. If you’ve ever wanted to jump into a synesthetic, effervescent waterfall of language that reads like The Metamorphoses in miniature, it is this poem.”

I like you. But not as much as I like self-portrait island love poems.

by Eric Wang

I am here, waiting for you on every island

my body has become. I pluck a scuttling

crab from my belly button. I fish a yellowtail

from my waistband. I trim the furled

seaweed from my pubic hair, then I turn my belt into

a sushi train. I’m saying I’d like to be a perpetual

feeding machine, a circular ecosystem

for you to sample. My heart swells from island

gigantism. My ample biodiversity

roarschirpssquawksgrowlswhistlessings

for your arrival. Though for lack of a dove, I give you a

mallard from my sleeves, flightless and ambling,

stub-wings opened to the cumulus clouds

darkening over my head. Shelter your dry hands

in my palm-tree hair, nuzzle and shake out

a coconut. If you scalp the fruit, you can

drink. Meanwhile, I’ll work the fibrous husk

into wiring for a coconut-radio playing:

how deep is your love, how deep is your love,

how deep — too near the coast, a whale

bearing a rainbow in its spout-breath breaches.

Beaches on my chest.