Michelle Tong | Ode to Hors D’oeuvres | Poets Resist

Michelle Tong is a writer and medical student from Milwaukee, Wisconsin. She has been published in The Margins (Asian American Writers’ Workshop), Watershed Review, and Waccamaw, among others, received scholarships from Brooklyn Poets and the Speakeasy Project, and reviews fiction and poetry for the Bellevue Literary Review. She lives in New York City.

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Also by Michelle Tong: Driving Lessons

Poets Resist
Edited by Logan February
July 30, 2019

Michelle Tong

Ode to Hors D’oeuvres

Scarlett Johansson must have eaten them on set: blue cheese canapé and scallop au gratin, mango ricotta and salmon tartare. I know this because I starred in a movie once too, picked at feta gazpacho and melon caprese, rhubarb prosciutto and eggplant polenta. In the first scene, I cut brie with a small spade, shove a slice onto my cracker. A white woman tells me I’m using the wrong knife, pulls out her own blade. Brie is a French cheese, she says, makes room on her plate and cuts another piece for herself. (All scripted, of course.) Off set, I eat more hors d’oeuvres. Feel small bites of salmon inch down my throat. Tartare is French for raw, the same way polenta is mostly Italian and Johansson is all Japanese. The best movies help the audience forget so they can do it all over again. In the second scene (same movie, still 2019), I’m eating hors d’oeuvres (gruyère, Carr’s crackers). A white woman asks me, You’re not from here, right? and I tell her that the best movies transport the audience to a foreign place, another body. I eat more hors d’oeuvres.

I wrote this poem in response to the disconnect between language and action in diversity and inclusion initiatives. In the film industry, we see this on the individual level when Scarlett Johansson claims to support diverse casting but goes on to play roles perfect for burgeoning trans or Asian actors. As a queer, Asian American woman, I want to hold Johansson and others to their word.