Related Resources • Index of poems at About Poetry by poet name • Poetry Bookstore • Independent Poetry Books & CDs

Elsewhere on the Web • Lawson Fusao Inada poems, bio & commentary at Modern American Poetry • 3 poems by Inada at Hootenanny Magazine

You say you are what you eat; you are wrong. You are how you eat. Sometimes a poem says it all, nutritiously, like this tasty snack from Lawson Fusao Inada...

EATIN’ WITH STICKS

When you think about it,
eatin’ with sticks
is the natural thing to do;

that is, without getting all
sociological about it,
it makes logical sense

to handle your food
with these smooth extensions
of your fleshy fingers --

that way, the hot
is truly cool,
bit by hit making its way

south to your mouth
as you choose
what you chews,

chowing down on, say,
succulent shoots of bamboo
with sticks of bamboo

as you come full circle
in the ecological
sense of things,

which makes good sense
and shouldn’t
bamboozle any bambino

with a lick of sense,
a lick of taste,
and elders demonstrating

the social, logical value
of a world not to waste,
slash, stab at random,

not to just scoop around
like so many grains
of surplus and plenty.

Moreover, sticks
are never alone --
as in “sticks together,”

they are paired
like the very stereo
parts of the body --

arms, hands, legs, feet,
ears, eyes, molars,
nostrils of the nose,

with all of those
working together ricely,
in sync, as we eat. . .

But wait -- what’s missing?
Right -- a whole person
does not a society make. . .

Thus, as any unshaven sage
in a mountain hermitage
will instruct you,

“You need a bowl, baby!”
Which is to say,
“You can’t go it alone!”

And even a hermit
wouldn’t be here
if it weren’t for

sticks and bowls,
the whole enchilada
of Yin and Yang,

of boys and girls,
of what makes the world
worth sitting down with,

wherever you are,
blessing the bowl
of food, community,

collective memory,
creative heritage,
the grains, the noodles

that wouldn’t have it
any other way:
“Eat us with STICKS!”

Lawson Fusao Inada,
from his book Drawing the Line,
©1997, Coffee House Press

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Compare prices to buy his books • Drawing the Line • Legends from Camp • Only What We Could Carry

Lawson Fusao Inada was born a third-generation Japanese American. In May 1942 his family joined over 1000,000 other Japanese-Americans in camps where they were confined for the duration of World War II. He was first incarcerated at the Fresno County Fairgrounds, then moved to a concentration camp in Arkansas, and finally was interned at a camp in Colorado at the end of the war. His poetry collections are Drawing the Line (1997) & Legends from Camp (1993), both from Coffee House Press. He is the editor of Only What We Could Carry (Heyday Books, 2000), an anthology on the Japanese American internment experience. His newest project is a poetry video called “What It Means To Be Free,” available from TTTD Productions (541.482.0543).

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