Esther kim
2003
The instant their bodies
almost realize how to fly—
cotton candy clings to the brothers’
fingers, to their seat, atop the vertex
of roller coaster tracks, and my father
counts before
the beast below them
falls—3
for my uncle’s mistake of listening
for ghosts instead—2
for the news of a stray coaster, hurtling
into Mexico City—1
for the night my uncle’s alcohol-
slick hands dented the walls
of his parents’ bedroom. My father
and my uncle, both festering
products of two godless decades.
They seem to forget her more, hold up
green bottles or Bibles
as makeshift offerings to a mother
more deity than understood. She is left
only in piles of auburn photographs,
my father’s fingerprints smudging
where my grandmother tries
to peel out of the page and rise.
Esther kim
We swallowed
dandelions on the hill
behind our temple, drowned
in prayer. Amen—passed down
to every rustic province
in the south, spoon-fed
to you, children formed
from surplus rebellions
and taproots—we used
to own the tilted mountains
of the north, now graveyards
for the relatives we were tricked into
sending down the Yalu River.
Some secret we gnaw on
to feel less god-
forsaken when the war is won
but not won over. When
the sky resembles
smoke, we set an extra bowl
at the table, one for the cry
lost to us. We watch
the scallions circle
in the untouched soup,
and bow over a handmade sign:
look for me—age 9—boy, pray
as if we are still caught
in a field of wasted brothers.
Esther kim
1941—the year of the metal
snake. what the hell is that? you ask
to snappy prayers under
milk skies, but can you blame
us? girls who play hide-
and-seek in bikini-striped bodies—
play immigrant, not burial,
play blues, a noose fitted around
winter’s throat. there’s more
than one way to say we’ve killed two birds
with one stone, but that’s the bone-
bruised alley our grandfather took
before the bombs. now,
i paw gardenias with my bare feet,
and shovel papaya flesh
into my mouth—two orange suns
colliding. when evening comes
in a crow’s call and creamsicles
weigh on our tongues,
we scatter breast bones like songs,
hunger for another migration
to where we are no longer
stacking dolls but daughters
fisting bullets.
—
Set in America during World War II
ESTHER KIM is a Korean-American writer from Potomac, Maryland. Her poetry is forthcoming or published in Diode, Up the Staircase Quarterly, and Half Mystic, among others. A high school senior, she has been recognized by The Atlantic, the Scholastic Art & Writing Awards, and the Poetry Society of the UK.