Sawako Nakayasu: I’m Sawako Nakayasu, and this is PoetryNow. This poem is coming out of a whole series of poems I’ve written that feature girls. In my mind I refer to them as the girl poems.

(READS POEM)

Girl Soup

I get tired of being the one to make all the decisions so when they ask me where I want to eat, I say that I don’t care, I’d eat anything at this point. Next thing I know, I am face to face with a bowl of Girl Soup and I just can’t bring myself. Some of us at the table are in a hurry to eat the soup, they are specifically trying to eat the girls quickly because they seem to know that if you wait too long they turn into cyborgs or robots, and those are harder to chew. I can see that some of the girls are still alive and perhaps would like to be extracted from the soup, but when I squint I see that there are girls all over the floor with varying amounts of soup clinging to their clothes (you didn’t think they were naked, did you?) and so there goes that idea. Just at the moment I think I am running out of options, something comes over me and I take a deep breath and I do it, I jump right in there, that bowl of Girl Soup, no one is checking IDs or questioning my size or gender or race or voter affiliation, and I quick round up all the girls in the bowl into a large huddle. We have now obliterated two major problems: huddled together we are too large to eat, and also we’ve taken care of the problem of the eater.

* * *

It’s kind of disturbing to consider the nudity or not of the girls. And in a way, I’m breaking the fourth wall and sort of bringing in the presence of a reader to the poem. To be like, hey you, you’re part of this, too. (LAUGHS)

(QUOTING FROM POEM)

but when I squint I see that there are girls all over the floor with varying amounts of soup clinging to their clothes (you didn’t think they were naked, did you?)

* * *

The speaker spends most of the poem appearing to be empathetic or trying to find a solution. And to me it is important to address the fact that the speaker can be both the problem and the solution at the same time. That’s really, I think, the soup we live in, is that we’re all part of the solution and the problem at the same time. We can be trying to save the girls, and we can be trying to do the right thing, and yet, we’re also the eater, we’re also the person sitting there with the bowl of Girl Soup. And then we’re also the girl in a way, too, by the time we join them.

(QUOTING FROM POEM)

I jump right in there, that bowl of Girl Soup, no one is checking IDs or questioning my size or gender or race or voter affiliation, and I quick round up all the girls in the bowl into a large huddle. We have now obliterated two major problems: huddled together we are too large to eat, and also we’ve taken care of the problem of the eater.

It ends on a positive note, like we’ve solved the problem. And yet, (LAUGHS) they’re still huddled together in a soup. We still don’t know what becomes of them. So the problem hasn’t been solved in the long term. It’s just kind of an immediate problem that’s been solved. They’re not gonna get eaten right away. But on the other hand, I think that you can take it in an optimistic way. Like maybe that soup can become a happier place to live.

Katie Klocksin: That was Sawako Nakayasu and her poem “Girl Soup.” I’m Katie Klocksin and this is PoetryNow, a production of the Poetry Foundation. For more about this series, go to poetryfoundation.org/poetrynow.