~ Lithoredo abatanica
One of my favorite parts in Woman
Warrior is when a bird leads the girl
deep into the mountains, where an old
couple who are really Jedis or Kung
Fu masters train her to become
a great warrior. She fasts for days
and days then eats only ferns or moss
or shoots, drinks only dew or melted snow,
which sounds more extreme than keto.
When her hunger is almost unbearable,
she either hallucinates or a rabbit appears
and jumps into the fire, sacrificing itself
so she might eat every part of it, return
to the world strengthened, and vanquish
all her country's foes. I don't know
how she does it: how she demolishes entire
armies and rescues women that have been kept
in basements or dungeons, then returns to her
village, serene as can be, to take up again
the ordinary life of wife and daughter.
When I was a thin and scabby-
kneed schoolgirl prone to nosebleeds
and allergies, you could see clear
across the roofs of neighboring houses
to the parish church and adjacent
elementary school, and tell
when students were dismissed for the day.
Then my mothers would whip up an afternoon
snack: usually hotdog slices piled on a plate
of fried rice, with a bottle of orange soda
or Coke. They'd sit me down as soon as I
came through the door; I ate and struggled
to finish everything, not sparing the last
grain, as they stood sentinel on each side.
Heroic eating, scholars call it—that trope
in novels where immigrant characters pick
the flesh of fish and fowl close to the bone,
then boil these to get at the nourishing
marrow. Neck bones and gizzards, chicken
feet, yards of innards washed clean
to make garlands packed with meat
and onions and blood—Which is to say,
all the parts that others deem savage,
though abroad they might try haggis
and a wee dram. This is not
to be confused with Mukbang, those
YouTube cooking/eating broadcasts
where in one sitting, the hosts push
enough noodles and eggs and hot sauce
into their mouths to feed a dozen men.
Some of the most amazing are petite
women like Yuka Kinoshita, who has more
than five million followers and can pack
anywhere between five and twenty-five
thousand calories into her wispy
frame. Since I've become someone
who saves all the leftovers in the fridge,
I'm not sure how to think of this kind
of extravagance. While I take pleasure
in food and flavor, I like to think
that eating could have some kind
of quiet purpose beyond itself—
perhaps like rock-eating shipworms
who tunnel with ease through limestone
as if it were a loaf of sourdough
or an apple: changing in time
a river's course, leaving behind a hive
of hollow cells, tiers of capsule hotel-
like spaces where snails and crabs
and fish could take up residence.
Poet Luisa A. Igloria (Poetry Foundation web page, author webpage ) is Co-Winner of the 2019 Crab Orchard Open Competition in Poetry for her manuscript Maps for Migrants and Ghosts, forthcoming from Southern Illinois University Press in fall 2020. She is the winner of the 2015 Resurgence Prize (UK), the world’s first major award for ecopoetry, selected by former UK poet laureate Sir Andrew Motion, Alice Oswald, and Jo Shapcott. She is the author of What is Left of Wings, I Ask (2018 Center for the Book Arts Letterpress Chapbook Prize, selected by former US Poet Laureate Natasha Trethewey); Bright as Mirrors Left in the Grass (Kudzu House Press eChapbook selection for Spring 2015), Ode to the Heart Smaller than a Pencil Eraser (Utah State University Press, 2014 May Swenson Prize), Night Willow (Phoenicia Publishing, 2014), The Saints of Streets (University of Santo Tomas Publishing House, 2013), Juan Luna’s Revolver (2009 Ernest Sandeen Prize, University of Notre Dame Press), and nine other books. She is a member of the core faculty of the MFA Creative Writing Program at Old Dominion University which she directed from 2009-2015. In 2018, she was the inaugural Glasgow Distinguished Writer in Residence at Washington and Lee University. When she isn’t writing, reading, or teaching, she cooks with her family, knits, hand-binds books, and listens to tango music.