Poetry: Fried Eggs For Breakfast

Fried Eggs for Breakfast

 

My dad in a white tee

shirt. Collar stretched,

starched in old sweat, reading

yesterday's paper slowly, tilling it with

a dictionary.

His chopsticks scratch a Kmart

plate, next to him plastic wrapped Kmart

cake. His paper sighs as he folds it back

again, for tomorrow.

We don't eat in the dining room, it's been

cellophaned for fine furniture.

We eat in the kitchen,

on sticky mats that say

it'd be Prudential to buy insurance.

A fried egg leaves its first home

"But you try to keep the center,"

my mom says. "And we don't call it fried

we call it held, 荷包. Like a pocket,

like a purse." A small sun housed

in a purse of exploding clouds,

"And you have to flip it," she says,

"To hold the center.”

 

 

 

 

 

Albert Hwang is a Taiwanese American poet. Born in Tennessee and raised in Illinois, he writes about alienation, distance, and inherited grief in the Asian American experience. He is a 2004 James B. Reston New York Times Gold Key winner (Scholastic Arts & Writing). His poems have appeared or are forthcoming in Unbroken, The Longmeadow Literary Journal, Pen Pushers, and other publications.