My needs are different
From those of the old peninsula.
“Black sesame ginger only white seeds”
I ask. “Can you
Make noodles at home
Without pulling, rice wine
Using champagne yeast, luxury
From SPAM rations and a militant
Impulse to make things even
Out of welter, and waste?”
Which is to say, I am left
With a wasted instinct—to want
To make from scratch the grains and spirits
That haunt a foreign land.
All this must be tribute, then.
I improvise
The ancestral rites, defer
To their methods, and the moment
These wrong pears make distance
Itself an offering.
This is just
What I know—
What is mine
And what we must still take from strangers.
