TRACK//FOUR
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BACK TO VOLUME ONE // ISSUE FOUR

GHAZAL FOR SCORCHED EARTH

CHRISTINA IM
Your mother’s palms look so much smaller from home. 
Gold-veined. Thinned to shell casings and numbed. Home:

this faultless echo reversed into motion. Soft. Remember 
those days? I mean before the wind, before it hummed home

as in slaughterhouse, as in you will only be beautiful 
facedown. Floating. If only you’d never swum home.

If only the water were clearer and you could carve 
a better breath to die in. Could say freedom, home,

brand-new bodies. Instead, you wake no better than tomorrow, 
screaming ash, holding your plaster eyes. Drums: home

beating at the jaw your mother gave you. I’d be lying 
if I called you braver for this. Shot down at random. Home--

past the fog-wreathed bullet that knows your name, toward 
the boy in the trench who doesn’t. Slow down some. Home

is the cause, the effect. The shrapnel makes sense of your limbs 
better than your language ever will. Names this kingdom home.

As if every open hand is a window blown south. As if silence 
is also an ancestry. No more, no less than outcome. Home

can’t save the birds, their bones. The year you were born.
​A new god of regret for each day. So it is. So you come home.

EASTERN EPIC

CHRISTINA IM
For Yu Gwan-sun
Story cleanshot out of the honest girl’s spine. 
                            Story silver. Story gasped into a hand,

a fist. Story bolted & bolting through a page 
                           turned to daybreak. Story covering

the honest girl’s tracks. Tracks scratched   
                           in the language of a body as it blooms

around a bullet. A soft death its only birthright.
                           Story of a hundred fists

& all the force it takes to keep them 
                           open. Story saluting every snow

-stung peak the honest girl’s left 
                           to the sun. Story with a trickster god

for every honest girl. Trickster god for 

                           every girl-shaped doorway. As if

you step through her skeleton & this 

                           is your road to freedom. Story without
                           
a road to freedom. Story breathing 1920 
                           and every year it swallowed. Story

​with the truest aim & the falsest heart. 

                           ​Story with eyes that remember. Story

with feet that forget. Story told straight 

                           ​into the dirt. Story real & running.

Story dawned. Story running. Story gone.

FURBY

CHRISTINA IM
// I THOUGHT THIS ENDED AT THE PAUSE // 
                     can you hear the scream wound

              and rewound like rubies scraped 
                                       over a newborn’s tongue / have you

seen the silence it lives in lean 
              backward through power lines that only want

                     ​to forget / how did it feel to open it up 
sell it out of the bad man’s mouth and into

                     ​the dreams of a worse one // 
IT WOULD BE EASIER JUST

              TO TELL ME // please 
                                       ​before the lights spill

              back over me and the whole house 
is quiet again / what’s a better word

                     ​for decent / one that I can wrap  
              my breath around and squeeze

              and squeeze 
                     ​// THIS ISN’T ABOUT WHAT I DO

OR DON’T THINK IS COMING // 

              I don’t care about the plastic / I know

the way things burn   
                     or try to be more than their creators

                                                / tell them catch me 
​
                     if you can but they can

              do anything they want to a body 
that can always be bought

                     into waking // UP IN HEAVEN 
WHERE THERE ARE

              NO CAMERAS // because 
                                     it’s like I’ve always said /

                     the only true paradise is the one 
              my hooded eyes were made in

                                               but fail to remember

Picture
CHRISTINA IM is a Korean-American writer and high school student from Portland, Oregon. She was named a 2017 YoungArts Finalist in Writing (Poetry). Her fiction and poetry have appeared or are forthcoming in Rose Red Review, Words Dance, Strange Horizons, and The Adroit Journal, among others. In addition, her work has been recognized by Hollins University, Princeton University, Bennington College, the Adroit Prizes for Poetry & Prose, and the Alliance for Young Artists & Writers.
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  • ABOUT
    • MASTHEAD
    • CONTACT
    • CONTRIBUTORS
  • ISSUES
    • VOLUME ONE >
      • ISSUE ONE
      • ISSUE TWO
      • ISSUE THREE
      • ISSUE FOUR
    • VOLUME TWO >
      • ISSUE ONE
      • ISSUE TWO
      • ISSUE THREE
      • ISSUE FOUR
  • SUBMISSIONS
  • BLOG