Jennifer Huang

song of 臭豆腐 (stinky tofu)

“I celebrate myself, and sing myself”
—Walt Whitman

a smell before you see & taste—my foul like a hand reaching dimensions
beyond human comprehension. I waft a ballad so ancient, so perfect

you’ll pray to forget me, exceed me, belittle me. alas, my stench soaks you
a waterfall of rotting garbage you can’t rinse out. I am a parade of wet socks,

cheese, & moldy feet. relish my complexities: can you taste what bathed me?
mother brine flaunted this way of being too much; they say I am too much,

their protests only making my reek louder, happier—joyful stench!
when they discovered me, it was like newton & gravity. they fell

hard & fast. I kill soft, delicious. you could only be so lucky,
so lucky to taste this wicked love. eat me! o, eat me & be blessed.

Jennifer Huang is a writer and teacher with a visual arts background. The daughter of Taiwanese immigrants, she currently lives in Ann Arbor, MI, where she is pursuing her MFA in Poetry at the University of Michigan Helen Zell Writers' Program. She serves as an Assistant Poetry Editor for Sundog Lit, and her essays and poems have appeared in The Rumpus, Michigan Quarterly Review, The Blueshift Journal, and elsewhere. You can find out more at www.huangjennifer.com.