Poem of Eating, with Shipworms and Mukbang

~ 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.