ELANE KIM

Spoken Word | Homeschool, Walnut Creek, CA

How To Cook Maine Lobster

I saw her before he did. lady in white dress, blushing

red. mom told her to find a good man so she did

what she could and fell headfirst. he was older, wiser

& she was lucky she had a choice. at the wedding

mom shook the groom’s hand but at home she shook her head

& sighed. lady in pink dress carries baby in blue.

they shop for knives, pots & seafood. pass by

the fish gallery & baby squeals. lady cradles baby

& calls him her own. lady is still learning how

to call things her own. lady is still learning how

to catch the bones as they fall, how to stop

the unraveling of a body. lady has learned that

there are some things closed doors can’t hide.

lady reads instructions for dinner (because the good man

& his good child need a good dinner, not like last night

when she forgot the roast in the oven, didn’t notice

the smoke or the alarms going off. that night

lady wiped mashed potatoes from the walls,

baby food from the floor & lady was still lucky

she had a choice): there is one humane way

to kill a lobster. place it headfirst into seasoned water,

turn up the heat slowly & it won’t notice the death

filling its lungs. lobsters have no vocal chords,

so don’t worry. the hissing is just from the water.

lady in blue dress, blushing red lobster in 150° water

being boiled alive. her third-degree burns

are third-world problems. mom asks if she’s happy.

lady in blue hesitates, antennae twitching

but static follows. she wipes baby’s face & says

yes. if the neighbors ask, the screaming was from the water.

Daughter Tongue

Bring me to a city with a million faces

that look like mine. When monsoon season comes,

streets will fill with rain. Frogs will find a home

in my throat. When monsoon season comes,

my grandparents will call me by a name I don’t know.

From this city I inherit displacement, the skeleton

of my mother’s voice. This is home: a roofless

mouth, an unwound body. Do you see now,

what is lost in translation? Do you see now,

that a language dies long before it is buried?

That there is only so much you can mourn.

Sometimes I long for a language my tongue does not

recognize as its mother. Sometimes my tongue

feels foreign in its own body. I dream of lives unlived.

Here is where I wish I knew how to say, Tell me

about this city & its million faces. Tell me

how to remember my blood. Here is where

my tongue splits. Here is where I croak.