Force Fed

I spoon pepper pork into plastic—not to save sauce,
but to stretch its warmth across the silence
where my reply should be.

Ma scoffs: the wok wasn’t hot enough.
“American pans,” she says, “only good for eggs and regret.”
Steam clings like doubt, stinging my eyes
like the job I never chased.

All week, interviews line up,
as if I never left this kitchen. I stir. I wait.
I mouth polite answers that fade
while your voice crackles above the sizzle.

“Tell me about a time you failed,” they ask.
“Inclined to decline,” I joke—
but it sticks in my throat like pepper and blame,
too rough to swallow.

“Eat more pork,” you urge, though allergic.
You recall Cutie, begging on her hind legs.
“Not the new pup,” you sigh.

And I drift to Cutie’s kidneys failing—
guilt flooding the memory.

You tell me to pack the rice.
The new puppy laps sauce from my leg.
I scrape the pot clean, grain by grain,
whispering, let it stay whole—

as if saving rice might save something else.

*

Kimmy Chang is working toward her first chapbook. She is a Pushcart Prize-nominated poet whose work has appeared or is forthcoming in trampset, Scapegoat Review, and Sky Island Journal. She studied poetry at Stanford and works as a Computer Vision Engineer. Originally from McKinney, TX, she enjoys spoiling her two tiny, rambunctious fluffs.