Lantern Review: A Journal of Asian American Poetry

Melissa Roxas

The Tongue

Belongs to the river,
Touches all the parts
That are sacred to water.
It begins with the bone,
Bits of flesh,
It asks questions
About the first things.

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Issue 1 | June 2010

Frances Won

On Dating Small Town Guys

It began at an oriental supermarket, I guess,
with a jar of brined pigs' feet. I guess there
was something exotic about stewing the "throw
away" part of the pig like eating a fish head with
the eyeballs still filmy and vigilant using chopsticks
to snatch the steamed pupil right out of the socket.
I guess you thought about bringing me home
when I told you that I knew how to prepare pigs'
feet in sweet sauce with tea eggs. I guess you
wanted to introduce me to your father as your
new girlfriend when I told you that I also ate
the skin and the tendons. I guess you wanted
to believe that back in China, my mother fed us
gobs of pigs' feet every night. That we lined the
dinner table with old newspapers on which we'd
spit out toenails and tiny bones.

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