I never knew cheese
could smell like that.
Like a pair of old sneakers.
Salted fish, we call them
where I come from.
The same pungent smell.

I looked at the bag of mozzarella.
I had been keeping it for later.
I finally decided to open it.
But it was already opened.
I did not remember opening it.

I touched the bag.
My fingers smelled.
It must be the package.
Something touched it.
I washed it clean.
I took out a little
to melt in the microwave.

The smell came from the cheese.
Not the packing.

We did not grow up with cheese.
The first time we saw it,
it was donated
by a country far away.
My mother carried a gallon tin of it home.
We crowded the table, eager,
ready to sample it.
We took a bite
and as fast spat it out.
Inedible.

Ma said,
Those Americans,
when they send food to other countries,
they should make sure first
we know how to eat it.

We threw the whole thing out
and remembered it
the rest of our days.
Today, that would be a treat.
But not in the fifties.

Millet we understood.
Cook it like rice, we were told.
It did not taste like rice,
but at least it was edible.

The food came
with an emblem of two hands shaking,
in the colors of America,
blue, white and red,
stripes and stars.

At the monastery,
cheese met the same reaction from me.
It took me a while
to learn how to eat it.

But never
have I come across cheese
that smelled like salted fish,
like a pair of shoes
kept too long without washing.

— Trudi Hsu, with Claude