Elegy While Briefly Suspended

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.

War on our tongues, 1953

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.

YESTERDAY: AN ISLAND

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.