My father’s love

is a fried Spam sandwich.

On Wonderbread. With extra mayo.

Wrapped up in aluminum foil.

The sandwich is his version of Catholic Communion.

It’s his way of saying, I love you, which he didn’t

say very often when I was growing up.

But … I ate a lot of Spam.

In Church, you eat the Body of Christ

receive holy-life, eternal.

With Spam, you eat pork, which remains

good-in-a-can, forever.

Sunday brunch at our house:

garlic-fried jasmine rice laced bright

with sea salt and green scallions, wrinkled

skin hot dogs pan seared flaccid,

and eggs sunny-side up, the edges

browned to a fine crunch.

My favorite –

Golden brown leaves

of thin sliced Spam

fanned out like a deck

of brand new cards.

It is a matter of fact. Filipinos love to eat canned meats.

In the Philippines canned meat is luxury. It says

to the neighbors, I’m rich. I can afford to buy meat.

American meat.

I wasn’t born in the Philippines.

I grew up in New York City

where nobody really ate Spam.

Back home it was a joke.

Sign. Tell. Hidden tattoo.

Mark.

Spam is kitsch.

It belongs in the secret stash

of a fifties fallout shelter, in-between

the dusty boxes of iodine

the 30 gauge shotgun shells.

It’s realer than real. It’s not food.

It’s irony.

Spam is G.I. Joe’s favorite dinner.

It is the first animal that Man ever invented.

It’s what the people get after the livestock is

slaughtered, after all the able-bodied

men are killed.

Spam goes great with a scorched earth policy.

It’s the meat that comes after the war.

Maybe that’s why Southerners

love it so much.

I can still see my father’s face, inhaling

the sizzle-hot, turning the crackling

slices over saying, you’re going to love this.

In high school, I zipped my knapsack tight

so the other kids wouldn’t smell my house

when I walked down the halls. I believed

they might smell the hangdog look

in my father’s eyes - taste the history

of yesterday’s fry pan.

Spam is class in a can

mark of the colonizer

metal brand

on the inside

of my tongue.

It is my father’s heart

deep-fried in sacred bacon fat

kept in the coffee

can under the sink

next to the Ajax.

Spam, the shame of animal

not knowing the names

for all their parts.

Spam, salt flesh

of yesterday’s American

colonial expedition, surviving

heat wave after heat wave

in the equatorial pantries

of my father’s homeland.

Spam, brick of pink

gold, glistening

in the merienda

afternoon.

 :

Spam, the American flag

come home to roost in my palate

taking residence in my arteries

the last hundred years of foreign policy

bumping up your insurance premiums.

Spam, the export product Iraqi

children ask for

by name.

Spam, my father’s fatty love

the rosy pink that says I care

from the pigstalls of America’s

heartland.