WEN LIM
Fish/borne
poetry finalist in our 2020-2021 Writing Contest
What is the holiday season, if not a net migration
of landlocked salmon finding their seas? This explains why
I am at the fish market when the lunar calendar turns —
searching for abundance.
Mama taught me how to pick the best of, meaning: eyes like clear pools
studded with black, a body that barely gives, glass confetti scales
intact and glittering. Discard the soft belly that spills. Hook a finger
and turn the cheek – we want gills the color of blood, not waste.
Look for flesh that almost-squirms, slippery, unzipping partway
under the blade.
魚生, an equation of shredded vegetables and sauces to be added
in precise order: raw salmon, for excess / stubby crystals of pomelo
for luck / a flash of oil for twelve months of riches / a blessing
of carrots / crushed peanuts a carpet of gold / and a final flick of
plum sauce — for love that sticks, honeyed, to these teeth. Now toss.
An explosion of vegetable threads and chopsticks, everywhere.
I once read about counting rings on a salmon scale, how
each dark, tight band becomes a marker of movement, another year
of bodies airborne, flying against the current. Four seasons: almost
the same length of time it takes for me to rebuild a life across oceans
with only the small waves of longing, pulling at shore.
In the kitchen I sharpen memory like a knife and attempt
to recreate the exact weight of home on a dinner plate. I’m so hungry,
by which I mean, if only I could eat my lonely, as if I could feed myself
into belonging, and so I keep eating — I mean drowning — in abundance,
left with nothing but a bellyache after and a mouth half-open, barely wide
enough to hold my mother’s tongue.
Wen works in business development for a tech firm in London, which means that she identifies as a strategy analyst by day but an accidental poet always. Having grown up across multiple geographies and cultures, she’s always had a slightly confused accent, as well as a shifting sense of identity. Her writing often explores the intersection of home, body, and language — in particular, the concept and perception of belonging. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in: The Margins, Neologism Poetry, and more. She can be found at intercostalink.com and @intercostal_ink (Twitter/ Instagram).