Sashimi Course By Sofia Bening

Sashimi Course
 
Remember how they found him in that chair?
His eyes rolled back to greet his withered brain,
his skin in flakes that rustled through the air,
his bloated tongue with craters like a drain.
They crooned and swooned, then housed him in a jar,
cocooned his bones and fat with plastic stew.
Today, he gleams and glows, for he’s the star.
They poke and prod, they score and lance and chew.
 
A jellyfish, with purple-bluish sheen
is dancing in her own marine ballet.
A blanket shrouds her like a tattered screen,
and limp, her body hits a metal tray.
 
She’ll never dance again, for there’s a swarm
of chopsticks stabbing at the pickled warm.

Sofia Bening is the first Singaporean recipient of the U.K.-based Keats-Shelley Young Romantics Prize. She enjoys celebrating the weird and dissecting human nature through her writing. Her works have been published in Singapore in the All In! Snack Fiction Anthology and the Anima Methodi anthology by poet Desmond Kon. Currently, she studies Journalism, Creative Writing and Musicology at Northwestern University, where she writes for the student arts publication Scene+Heard.