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.
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.
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
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
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.
