Lisa DellaPorta

Lisa DellaPorta holds a BS in English from West Chester University and lives in the deep woods of Philadelphia. Publication credits for her work include Transient Magazine, BULL, and The Bookends Review. Find her regular musings on Instagram @dellaporta_writes, and on Substack at lisadellaporta.substack.com.

Easy read of the poems in the images above:

Diet Culture

I am 21. My friends have rented a beach house for a long weekend. Sprawled out on the upturned sofa cushions reconfigured around the coffee table, they grab into opened containers of Old Bay shrimp, ribs and potato salad. Half-chugged cans of beer shed rings of condensation in the August heat. I stand at the stove in the kitchen, baking a skinless chicken breast in the oven, two peeled potatoes knocking against each other in a boiling pot of water on the stovetop. Every few minutes I pop my head around the corner, straining to hear the conversation, to be included in the youthful rite of passage.

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One of the terrifying things about my medical condition is the concept of safe foods. I have an incredibly strict diet. Deviating from it causes violent flares, mock allergic reactions, days of pain. I remember more mainstream food experiences from my youth and earliest adulthood, before my mysterious ailments and eventual diagnosis. Going out to dinner as a social event and ordering whatever looks good on a menu, or traveling with the expectation that meals would be taken at new restaurants or based off of new supermarkets with unknown stock: these feel foreign now, albeit nostalgic.

The threat of tariffs and their likelihood to disrupt the supply chain for my sustenance is something that keeps me up at night. Much of my food is not shelf stable—the very nature of a low histamine food is one that hasn’t been stored, pre-cooked, or sitting. Nothing in a can, jar, or vacuum sealed bag is safe. Frozen food is the best bet, but only if I cook it myself. Frozen meals and prep made by food companies have vaguely-marked ingredients like ‘spices’ and ‘natural flavors’ that can’t be decoded, and there’s no telling how they cooled down or rested the food before dispensing it into a bag and freezing it. A few times a year I’ll optimistically pluck a new-looking bag from the freezer case, thinking myself lucky. For the week after, popping Benadryl while curled up under a heated blanket on the sofa, I steel within myself a new resolve to not weaken to the too-human desire for variety, to stay the course with the small but trusted nutritional toolkit I’ve already cultivated. My relationship with food has largely become one of sustenance rather than pleasure or socialization, a feat realized by the uncoupling of the self, the separation of what instinct tells me is good and what reason tells me will harm.

Gluten free, dairy free, mostly nut free - rice pasta has been a staple of my nutrition for over a decade. The most palatable kinds of it are not made in the United States. My stir fry noodles come from Vietnam and Cambodia. Shapes that cook consistently and mimic the geometry of my childhood meals come from Canada and Italy. Last week I had $200 of pasta shipped to my house. This week, tariffs are paused for 90 days.

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I am 30, just. Our house was the first in my direct circle to get COVID. There was no medical protocol for those not sick enough to warrant the hospital, no guidance other than to stay away from the public and monitor symptoms. It’s weeks past my sickest period,

when my husband stayed vigilant all night while I tried to sleep, listening to the shallow rasp of my breathing. Recovery seems to be in progress. My diet for the last few years has been good, all things considered, with more tolerated foods, and greater flexibility to go to specific restaurants offering certain cuisines. I splash soy sauce overtop my broccoli and tofu, something I eat on repeat since both last longer than meat in the fridge between scant grocery deliveries. The back of my throat itches half way through the bowl. My chopsticks pause mid-air, my vision around the utensils blurring as my eyes begin to swell shut.

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The sentiment from this administration’s supporters right now is that we will suffer inconvenience for a short while to force the setup of American manufacturing and goods. Even if that were to proceed with success, the wild in-between has a direct, disproportionate effect on the disabled and chronically ill. The products we use to survive must be readily available, and budgeted for. It’s not just food, but also medicine. The supplements and vitamins that help prop us up when our bodies break down, even if manufactured in the US, contain ingredients sourced from outside our 50 states.

I think of him, eating his fillet of fish in Mar-a-Lago, not worrying about how long it sat in a boat before it was carted off to be mechanically separated. Of his ‘good people’ who support familiar ideologies that would see the disabled scrubbed from this earth to cleanse the gene pool in support of a master race. In my unkindest moments I wish for them the terror of placing small bites into their mouths and waiting, impatiently, to see if what others eat in stride would be their undoing. I will unto their children and loved ones the expensive, mysterious gauntlet of sussing out the unseen brokenness of their bodies, of wading through blog posts and medical papers to determine what is truth and what is snake oil, of accepting their fate as guinea pigs in a system that offers no cures and no fixes.

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I am 36. On my lunch break from my job, worked from the computer in my spare bedroom upstairs, I thaw the potatoes that I roasted and portioned into freezer containers last weekend. Two precious eggs rattle, hard-boiling in the saucepan. And I stare at the mountain of boxes stacked neatly beside the refrigerator. Consider the variety, or at least what passes for it in my universe: stelline, caserecce, fettuccine, farfalle.