“O is for only odes / How many mango hate poems have you read? / Some living beings taste too sweet to earn malice”

Sometimes I'm down on my knees
and she pours what's left of herself into me
our eyes wide

I love making sandwiches
for people I care about. Maybe I’ll make one for you too: 

“Baba would make me sit in front of the orange-and-blue times table every day and memorize 7times4, 8times4,”

“The hairy leg of a crab sticking out from the broth, little cilantro leaf clung to it, is at once a lure and an alert.”

“Soy sauce, fish sauce—funny how you add it to fish—and some salt. All your grandma’s teaching is coming back to you now, as if you are still that young child, clothes baked by the harsh Vietnamese weather…”