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Aunties love it when seafood is on sale

By Kay Ulanday Barrett

Argyle Redline, Chicago, IL., June 1996

In summertime, the women
in my family spin sagoo
like planets, make
even saturn blush.
They split the leaves
of kang kong with
riverbed softness.

They are precise;
measure rice by palm lines
with laughter and season
broth made of creature’s last gasps.
You’d swear they were
teenagers again, talking gossip
stretching limbs
elastic, durable, like seaweed.

     Come dinner time,
skilled mouths slurp
through the domes of
shrimp and crab.

They
prize the fat,
the angles of their teeth
splinter claw, snap sinew,
dip tart into sweet
then back again;
bitterness balanced,
succulence on succulence,
is to find flesh from even the
smallest of spaces.

Women who swallow whole,
who make a pile of bones,
who suck teeth,
taste every morsel,
so that all that is left
is a quiet room
and shells of what once was.

To the daughters of dried fish nets
whose dreams dragged on sand,
dragged to this country,
they bring home recipe years later,
flick joints to garlic,
salabat to the sick,
culinary remix, teach cousins,
this is how we stay alive,
mourning in the Midwest
by taste bud.

Afterwards, they keep the ocean
husks for another meal
because to get a good deal
is to double.
And anybody from the island
will tell you,
that is where true flavor is

and what is hunger
anyway, but the carving
out of emptiness,
the learning you gotta always
always save something
for later?

 

 

 

Listen as Kay Ulanday Barrett reads "Aunties love it when seafood is on sale."
Added: Monday, November 19, 2018  /  Used with permission.
Kay Ulanday Barrett

Kay Ulanday Barrett is a poet, essayist, cultural strategist, and A+ napper. They are the winner of the 2022 Cy Twombly Award for Poetry by Foundation for Contemporary Arts. They have been awarded residencies from Tin House, James Baldwin Fellowship at MacDowell, Baldwin for the Arts Fellowship, and Millay Arts. Their second book, More Than Organs (Sibling Rivalry Press, 2020), received a 2021 Stonewall Honor Book Award by the American Library Association and is a 2021 Lambda Literary Award Finalist. They have featured at The United Nations, MoMA (Museum of Modern Art), Lincoln Center, The Whitney Museum, The School of the Art Institute, The Hemispheric Institute, Symphony Space, Brooklyn Museum, and more. Their contributions are found in The New York Times, Academy of American Poets, Literary Hub, Vogue, Poetry Unbound, The Advocate, The Rumpus, NYLON, them, Al Jazeera, & more. Visit their website or @brownroundboi on Instagram.

Image Description: Kay Ulanday Barrett, a brown, round queer with short black hair, performs at a microphone with transgender and rainbow flags in the background. They wear a gray blazer and glasses.

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