What Not to Buy for Lunch (for your parents)

It looked like white rice—

packaged with brown nuggets

of karaage fried chicken in a bento box.

Mom didn’t like its color.

Dad said it tasted funny.

Judgements made by some distant threshold

for rice palatability.

Was it because the rice failed to glisten

like dewdrops?

Hit the high notes of sweetness?

The texture altered by degrees in moisture,

chewiness, stickiness?

Not harvested at the start of a calendar year

in a particular prefecture in Hokkaido?

Milled in California—not fresh, in-store?

Mom didn’t like its color.

Dad said it tasted funny.

I couldn’t judge.

They fed it to the garbage can.