Vietnamese people
Don’t eat all their pho –
Cause they’re tiny – not wasteful
10.27.16
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Copyright by Minh Tan on listed dated of completion.
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Notes to this poem…
Pho is a national identity Vietnamese noodle soup.
I was at a local pho place with a Caucasian friend who had visited Viet Nam and taught in China for a while, so the waitress was kind of seeing who was more Vietnamese as I had left many years ago when I was only eight years old.
When we were done eating, I bragged I was more Vietnamese cause I loved it so much I ate it all, drinking up all the soup base. However, she surprised me to say I was wrong, and that Vietnamese people often leave a good part of the soup base. I asked really, before recalling the many times I had pho with others who left soup base behind. I knew she was right, but still fought to say that was terribly wasteful of a people in a country of need where food was scarce for many for many, many years.
Her reply was that they weren’t wasteful in leaving behind soup base, but that it was because they were tiny and didn’t want to ingest it all to get overfilled. I could sort of see that point, but I’ll tell ya, if I were hungry a lot because I didn’t have enough food, I’d eat and drink everything I could whenever I had access to some. I’d do it even if it overstuffed me cause it’d keep me full longer, and it’d be a feeling I would not mind having once in a while!
The F-series poems are part of a collection composed on my ferry rides across Halifax Harbour when the buses aren’t crossing the MacDonald bridge due to the Big Lift bridge redecking. This should keep happening until at least December 2016.
Minh Tan's Old Poetry 
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