Fried Eggs for Breakfast
My dad in a white tee
shirt. Collar stretched,
starched in old sweat, reading
yesterday’s paper slowly, tilling it with
a dictionary.
His chopsticks scratch a Kmart
plate, next to him plastic-wrapped Kmart
cake. His paper sighs as he folds it back
again, for tomorrow.
We don’t eat in the dining room, it’s been
cellophaned for fine furniture.
We eat in the kitchen,
on sticky mats that say
it’d be Prudential to buy insurance.
A fried egg leaves its first home
“But you try to keep the center,”
my mom says. “And we don’t call it fried
we call it held, 荷包. Like a pocket,
like a purse.” A small sun housed
in a purse of exploding clouds,
“And you have to flip it,” she says,
“To hold the center.”
First published in “A Thin Slice of Anxiety” (March 2026)
Albert Hwang is a Taiwanese American poet from Illinois. He writes about alienation, distance, and inherited grief in the Asian American experience. He is a 2004 James B. Reston New York Times Gold Key winner (Scholastic Arts & Writing). His poems have appeared or are forthcoming in Inscape Journal, Unbroken: Prose Poems, Heavy Feather Review, DIHP, Anxiety Press, Pen Pushers, Longmeadow Literary, and other publications.