Pork Fluff by Tiffany Hsieh

Tiffany Hsieh’s debut poetry collection Pork Fluff is a lot of fun. The book consists of prose poems, many describing unique, personal memories. The speaker draws the reader into the (often unusual) stories with accessible, oddly simple language and a strange view on the world. Poetry can do a really good job of showing the reader a new view on ordinary life, and this book does that work. For example, the speaker uses terms like “steal eat” to describe someone eating out of sight of their family and “kill price” to describe haggling at a store. The tone of these pieces is conversational and lively. Whether you’re currently a reader of poetry or not, I think you’ll enjoy this book. Buy here.

“Scarred”

This here on my chin is from when I accidentally branded myself with incense trying to steal candy during bai-bai. Ah-ma had said her prayers to Ah-gong and the gods, and I reached for the candy without seeing the burning stick staked there while the dead ate. Down here, on my right foot, that’s from a scooter’s exhaust pipe. It was a family outing to the rice paddies, and I was wearing slippers. Up here, on the left, I was hit by a swing. The doctor gave me nine stitches and a big white bandage around the head. For a while they thought I was going to be less bright. And here, my two front teeth, they are fake. I was playing Shark Attack on a marble slide with my brother. He was the shark. His wife didn’t come home with him last Christmas, and I asked about it at dinner. It’s none of your business, he snapped. No hesitation, no eye contact.

“The Blind Spot”

Before the construction crew appeared in the middle of the road with those orange traffic cones, she had been sticking to one lane below speed limit and going straight like her husband said. Dvorak was playing on FM. First time driving by herself in the dark in the snow paying attention to road signs in English, she knew something like this would happen, that she’d have to change lanes. She knew all about the blind spot although it was still a myth to her. Back home no one said anything about it and everybody drove no problem on roads smaller than this with more care than this. She turned off Dvorak and began slowing down. She was getting closer and closer to crashing into the construction crew if she didn’t change lanes, and it wasn’t until her headlights lit up their faces that she closed one eye and changes lanes right before taking out an orange cone. The truck from behind blasted a long fff that both shook and stimulated her. So much so that as she bypassed the crew unscathed and saw one of them making a hand gesture at her that she’d not seen before but had understood by its shape that it was hostile, she mimicked it, tentatively but surely, by lifting her middle finger to the windshield. Then, turning the radio back on, she was pleased to find that Dvorak was still playing.