A drop of peanut oil slides off the wok manned by Jack, a white guy. I yell at him, making him feel a retraumatization of his Italian immigrant childhood. He looks at me, one yellow eye, says, yes chef, and I feel like propane swooshed into a jet of fire. Jjajang sauce smoking up into wok hei. A Peking Skunk with Jjajang emulsion foam and pomade. Xian, who has thirty tattoos, throws a frying pan. Dan’s over-cooked the duck dish. Metal cleaver swings, finger browns like a leaf, absorb the black sauce with your swan-like hand. They don’t invite me to Netflix TV show Culinary Class Wars this year, but it does remind me of how miserable I am. My magnum opus will be food that becomes a lost birth certificate, becomes a wordless mouth.
In the beginnings of my career, I’m a line cook at a roadkill restaurant. You can’t hear it, but skunks are raw and fornicating. A wolverine self-soothes with protest music. Someone asks me where we source our meat. They come in fully clothed wearing shades. The guts of a deer are not problematic. Food isn’t about being classy, it’s about whether you can make someone feel the dead inside. There’s sometimes a duck on the pond, sometimes a child looking at the duck and the parent looking at the child, or sometimes just the child. It occurs to me I want to kill the duck, sous vide its lungs, and become the yellowest gradient of charcoal. The pond is incapable of holding my radiance. Unlike me, the kid will never amount to anything outside the water.
Father tells me that in the country-side he would shoot sparrows with a BB gun in the head and roast them. I’m a woman that cooks because fire exists. Jason, the guy with a hat-shaped fish on his head, tells me, damn girl, you know how to chop up that skunk. I’m a woman that cooks because I’ve been on fire. Jason tells me further, the skunk will transverse your ocean, kill thousands of fish and further exacerbate anti-feelings against sushi. I say, yes, forego culture, forego talks of dynasty.
Jong Yun Won (he/him) is a Korean-Canadian currently attending the UBC Creative Writing MFA. He is a retired tree planter, teacher of debate and research papers, and recreational basketball player. His poems are forthcoming or have been published in Yolk Mag, Bat City Review, Quarter(ly) Press, Stoneboat Literary Journal, Waccamaw journal and more.