Food and Beverage: “Staff Meal” by Diana Fu

Staff Meal

At the seafood counter, customers check
how long ago a fish swam in water

by looking beneath its gills:
icy bright crimson,  signs of fresh blood?

They request it deboned,            & gutted,           & fileted,
stripped of everything that makes it fish.

In this country, to be palatable
is to swim and drown at the same time.
                            Does your dinner still have its bones?
                            Does it bear its teeth at yours?

Home is a Sichuan restaurant anywhere
but especially in suburban Illinois.
We eat together after dinner service:
two cooks from Chengdu, a manager from Hunan,
                            and me, a waitress born halfway along diaspora.

I suck a snapper’s spine, piling dis-
jointed vertebrae on the table
while the chefs belly laugh, nodding in approval

                            “You’re still Chinese,
                                                   aren’t you?”

About Diana Fu

Diana Fu is a poet based in unceded Ohlone land (San Francisco Bay Area). Her work appears in Spark: A Creative Anthology, Cola Literary Review, Sky Island Journal, and elsewhere. She was a 2023 Interdisciplinary Writers Lab fellow, 2022 APAture showcase artist with Kearny Street Workshop, a 2020 Duet Fellow with eco-theater group Superhero Clubhouse, a Pushcart Poetry Prize nominee, and has received scholarships from Bread Loaf Environmental Writers' Conference and the Martha’s Vineyard Institute of Creative Writing. For more information, visit dianabaifu.com or @dianaaa_bai on Instagram.