All the stories you tell and this
is the part you skip over: the melted bridge,
a rash of marigolds blooming over
her shoulder, the way his body hit
the water; bones brittle like glass. Then:
the press South, soldiers at the door:
그는 어디 있니? Halabeoji curled in the floor
boards, silent, or maybe it was after—his slack
mouth, soju bottles, thick knuckles folded
over pearls at the kitchen table. The sound
as the string snapped around your mother’s
neck reminds you: it was never rewritten.
The white beads tinkle in your oma’s
draw-string bag all the way across the pacific,
pouring your father, like silt, into liquor
bottles, one after another, the stink of
Philadelphia, the city of brotherly love where
your younger brother vanished in the same
oily night which swallowed
the pearls, one by one.
Wet fur, teeth, pawprints linger
in my dreams, the forest with its soft sighs
remembers and I think: my skin cannot be
my skin; it cannot be torn from the body
which swallowed my body, and so
I do not want it. These bloody hands
are mine— they wash the hide of who
I was, and although he
is dead, damp breath forever faded
from the earth, his yellow eyes watch
my steps, pause at the buried axe,
my grandmother’s grave still turned
with loamy earth. Perhaps in another life
I would be the wolf, and haunt his trails,
looming in the shadows, loose jowls
tasting his cloak. As if when I
was born from the ripped belly
of the beast, I took his soul with his life,
his wrath, his hunger,
and his teeth.
A Star is Collapsing in Cygnus
Small specks of light fold into themselves,
by the swan in the sky, just a stellar neighborhood
away, while I commute the 75 through Seattle.
Between one breath and the next, it banks and
pinches out like a flame; a small black spot, gone
faster than the bird god took the girl, swallowed
her up, planting celestial seeds in the bruised
dark where it happened. And no matter how
many times my bus circles this block, my pencil
orbiting her name, I can’t escape the quiet
labor of a dying sun, the black hole pushing
through her legs to be born. Some violence
is so big, you can see it from space; supernova,
buckling into dark matter, bleeding bright dust
in rivers across the way. Others collapse quietly,
like a girl in the corner, feathers in her hair,
blinking from our view without a word.
I am trying to shed my skin and become
the animal you think I am, needy and territorial; ivory
claws trace your skin. One day I will
be mythic. The beast you’ve only ever seen
in stories. Maybe when you look, but cannot touch
I will be more real to you than I am
now. The girl’s number on your phone will be
small bones, crushed between my teeth;
I will shake your disinterest off my fur like a long
winter. When the snows come, you will
be cold, and I, a wild thing, won’t even care.