Food and Beverage: “utang na loob” by Noreen Ocampo

utang na loob

in the slim hallway of my kitchen / my father

cleans the crabs without the usual silver tools /

cracking the most promising bend of their legs

with his teeth / my mother is more gentle /

she severs the shrimps’ pointed heads / undresses

their soft bodies / every piece of sweet flesh

ends up in the same bowl / all for me / my parents

only stay for one day / they refuse to taste any

of their labor / they drive six hours home

with saltiness taunting their mouths

About Noreen Ocampo

Noreen Ocampo (she/they) is a Filipino American writer and poet from metro Atlanta. Her collection Not Flowers won the 2021 Variant Lit Microchap Contest, and her work also appears or is forthcoming in Palette Poetry, Sundog Lit, and Salt Hill Journal, among others. She holds a BA in English from Emory University and currently studies poetry in the MFA program at the University of Mississippi. She enjoys transparent things, ice cream, and the little tags connected to most tea bags.