Sweet and Sour
Published: 2007 May 6
Categories: Ars Poetica
Passage of time only like yesterday
Mother was feeding me with sticky rice in oversized bowls
With my bowl-shaped haircut
Making me look like a wonton in this Melting Pot of America!
When I was a kid I used to bang pots and pans
Cuz they say that's how these Asians name their kids:
Just drop a bunch of kitchen utensils down the stairs.
And it's such sweet music to my ears,
No not the stairwell cacophony of pots and pans
But the searing smell of fried catfish
And running water washing the bitter melons for
The bubbling and boiling sweet and sour soup
The bittersweet flavor that simply melts away
The scars of after-school scuffling with
Fist-talkers who think durian, like my people
Is the nastiest invention Mother Nature cursed us
To love; and to despise.
And that's what I did. Despise.
Now it's just frozen chicken nuggets and
Frequent field trips to fast food Mickey-Dees,
"Would you like flies... I'm sorry, fries with that?"
"Yes can you please supersize that?"
Coca-cola bottles line the floor of my room
Next to the bags of spicy chips from 7-11 open 24-7
And every passing day I feel like I'm drained
Not from the malnutritious junk food gorging spree
But that this stuff that I eat keeps me on the go
Always out every night and skipping dinner with the family
As if that's all what life was like here in America:
Convenient. Not quality. Con-fuckin-venient.
After years of feeling despirited from two-liters of Sprite
I walked downstairs to the sound of my grandmother's cackling pot
And wafting the steam of the rice cooker
Setting down bowls at each corner of the table
One in every cardinal direction of our lives
With ten dishes of food arranged at the center.
With each person seated and rice in bowl and chopsticks in hand
Moi. Let us begin the feast.
All food, we share. Any dish, your choice.
Freedom at the dinner table, a family democratic tradition.
This is my Asian America.
A sweet and sour relationship.
