Chloe L. Yeoh

There are two types of people:

those who can cook egg fried rice

and those who can only try.

Here is the cultural barrier:

wok hay. You either have it

or you don’t. In the spirit of stir-fry,

here lies the unspoken breadth.

Here lies the gap between your culture

and mine, where rice is not

just rice. Where rice, like words,

weighs heavy on the tongue

before it passes into thought. 

is an Australian-born Malaysian poet. She enjoys snail mailing and eating, the latter of which is the Malaysian national sport.