FEBRUARY POETRY: "THIS HOUSE DRINKS NO WATER" BY ALICE LIANG | Hyphen

When I was a child, my mother told me not to drink water with meals, citing a number of digestion-related health reasons. Years later, I drank water when I could not afford food. Alice Liang's poem reminds me of those years, and of all the history captured in the habits we are taught at home. —Marci Calabretta Cancio-Bello, Poetry Editor This House Drinks No Water Keeps no glasses around for dinner. Mouth full with no familiar language, I grasp at my throat for drink. Nainai clutches a bowl of bone broth with unsteady fingers, captains it across the table and splatters an ocean of stains to save me. Since then I’ve believed heaven is a place underwater. My naive request causes Yeye to set down his chopsticks, and come out of retirement for one more lecture: Water, he begins, fills a stomach meant for food — mid-sentence, he sev

When I was a child, my mother told me not to drink water with meals, citing a number of digestion-related health reasons. Years later, I drank water when I could not afford food. Alice Liang's poem reminds me of those years, and of all the history captured in the habits we are taught at home. —Marci Calabretta Cancio-Bello, Poetry Editor This House Drinks No Water Keeps no glasses around for dinner. Mouth full with no familiar language, I grasp at my throat for drink. Nainai clutches a bowl of bone broth with unsteady fingers, captains it across the table and splatters an ocean of stains to sa