I’ve been getting to know the work of poet Annie Kim. Here’s part of her poem “Post-Colonial Album: 1980” from Into the Cyclorama:

 

raw fish bleeding through a pile of newspapers

 

a skinny road with no shoulders

 

plane trees, fresh tar and stale bus diesel, men

riding bicycles in white cotton masks, though not

 

necessarily in that order

 

stick of rice cake burnt on one side, the frayed gloves

handing it to me red, then I’m peeling back the foil

 

the ice beneath the snow is yellow

hard like an ancient scab

 

we sing carols on the dark drive home, we have

 

the only car in the neighborhood, a garden and a gate

that locks us in, there is no

 

natural order to recollecting this

 

see these sunlit windowpanes

I stare out this morning, how miraculously they fit

 

side by side

 

 

I also love this little gem from “A Rag For My Father”:

 

A father is a kind of trap

you could easily fall for.

A father is a type of map

you stupidly search for.