Mixed-race in a room filled with your people you remember

skin ain’t kin, and yours rolls a degree
or two lighter than even the ones flashing
their Spanish or Chinese credentials. 

You feel the absence of a culture that can’t
be cultivated or regrown like lost toes,
feet, and legs as diabetes works from 

the foundation on up. You know
the presence of what is missing.
You know what is lost cannot come back, 

and its replacement is adjacent
if not tangential, like buying your kid
blister-pack toys from the swap meet 

where My Little Pony becomes Mystical
Ponies and a Transformer becomes
a Deformer and the absence of getting- 

along is filled with something, at least,
for the parent, but happens to be plastic
and not very close for the kid. 

But the hungry know to be grateful
because there can always be less.

Lunch Is a Cultural Artifact Exchange

Brown Dad’s coworkers, mostly Filipinas, unload their tiffin containers—
stacked, steel circles steaming with morning-cooked rice at the bottom
that warmed meats and veggies in the rings above, while we ate the cheap ones—

sandwiches from the value menu drive thru. I’d salivate and wonder
what it was in me these ladies excluded, what it was in Brown Dad—and it was
him, all lion proud and unwilling to take on adobo debts and rice remittances. 

Even with kid eyes, I could see a cultural exchange happening here, across
tables, genders, oceans: fresh rice for well-preserved meat and bread,
self-confidence for assimilation. “Can you teach me to talk like them?” 

Cebuano’s a lotlike Spanish, which will get you further here, so learn
that instead. I’d lick excess mayonnaise off the wrapper tasting the realization
that meat, sauce, and starch have the permanence of grief, and the closest 

I would ever get to my culture was found at the bottom of the gravy cup
at Jolliebee, where I taste a never-mine home in the saltiness. Where do I find
my country of origin if not in pulled pork and pancit? Now I fill my lunches 

too full, waiting for those ladies to join me in the celebration of steam
and the flavors of home, but find myself in the wrong:
wrong career, wrong ladies, wrong body.

Stuffed Chicken is the Body

I didn’t inherit a Filipinx tongue. It dislikes the feel
of fish, all flaky and light. It dislikes the taste
of crab, too, and the menu growing up was centered
around Brown Dad’s tastes and norms. 

Sometimes, dinner was amazing: cornstarched
sweet and sour pork or curry chicken. We’d clear
plates and tables, brown brothers and me. Sometimes
dinner was alienating: stuffed chicken or fish ball 

soup. We’d eat just enough to avoid the threats
and punishments. Food was so sacred, stapled,
and scarce, we had to come correct. I couldn’t ask
for school lunches, even if it saved money, 

and I couldn’t ask for lunch items in the groceries.
It would be like asking a priest to transubstantiate
a hoagie. But the West doesn’t see the sacred
in the everyday, and once in grade school, we potlucked 

some celebratory lunch. In the morning, I raided
the fridge because I knew not to ask questions
because food either existed or didn’t,
because questions are sometimes answered with

whips and whims, not logic. I found a half-eaten
stuffed chicken in a Goodwill crystal bowl.
Its wings and legs were stripped off—the only parts
us kids would eat—but without options I bagged,

brought, then dropped it. At the luncheon,
White Grandma was so proud I’d set a place for her,
and we both picked chunks of glass from the meat
creases and pretended to eat, knowing she’d bring

the chicken back home with her, clean the breaks,
and serve it for dinner again and again and again
until we choked it down or Brown Dad ate his fill,
like a priest, glowing at communion

while parishioners pray.

Author’s Biography

Christian Hanz Lozada aspires to be like a cat, a creature that doesn’t care about the subtleties of others and who will, given time and circumstance, eat their owner. He wrote the poetry collection He’s a Color, Until He’s Not. His Pushcart Prize nominated poetry have been published all over the world, including in Samjoko, Bamboo Ridge, Cordite Poetry Review, Emerson Review, After Happy Hour. Christian has featured at the Autry Museum and Beyond Baroque. He lives in San Pedro, CA and uses his MFA to teach his neighbors and their kids at Los Angeles Harbor College.