by Lucy Chuang

It is time for the sharpening when father pulls out the whetstone.
He polishes the knives until I see myself white abalone.
He glides the sharp edge against stone, pushing his strength until it becomes ink.
Blackwater pools underneath the blade, and his palms become pruned lettuce.
He teaches me to sharpen the knives first, fine enough to cut the little hairs off my arm.
I learn to descale the fish, like uprooting dandelions from a muddied ground.
I learn to gut the fish, an ancestral tradition, like ocean current in my throat.
We tie up the leftovers in little plastic grocery store bags, bury the entrails
within the freezer so they don’t smell.
We leave no trace behind but the buttered fat of the yellowtail stomach.
We eat it raw. It slips down to the gut. I can feel the clean cut of the knife blade
as Formosa drift-drowns.

About the Author
Lucy Maylee Chuang is an Asian American poet from Duluth, Georgia. Lucy is a graduate of
Princeton University, where she studied American Politics, Asian American Studies, and
Creative Writing. For her thesis, Lucy produced an original manuscript of poems centered on
belonging, social acceptance, and intergenerational memory titled “Kinfish River.” She is a
recipient of the 2020 Mallach Senior Thesis Prize from the Lewis Center for the Arts and the
2019 VS Pink with Purpose Project. Currently, Lucy lives and writes in New York City.