KIM, Suji Kwock

Rice-Field Road at Dusk

After Ko Un

In the village it’s the season of dried grass,

the smell of    burned dirt,

gaslight glinting through blackened stubble.

I walk home across the rice-fields,

brushing insects away from my face,

remembering old Namdong who was buried yesterday.

What does death ask of us?

I must change whatever it was I was

when the old man was alive.

I keep looking at the rice-fields, glinting in the dark.

Blasted by mildew, more withered than last year   —

how much work and love it must have taken.

In autumn, no matter how bad the harvest,

how big the debts   —

no thought of    leaving here, no thought of rest.

As life goes on, time isn’t the largest thing to think of,

it’s the smallest.

Growing, going

in drought or monsoon, mold or blight   —

what is the rice if   not alive?

Monologue fora n Onion

I don't mean to make you cry.
I mean nothing, but this has not kept you

From peeling away my body, layer by layer,

The tears clouding your eyes as the table fills

With husks, cut flesh, all the debris of pursuit.

Poor deluded human: you seek my heart.

Hunt all you want. Beneath each skin of mine

Lies another skin: I am pure onion—pure union

Of outside and in, surface and secret core.

Look at you, chopping and weeping. Idiot.

Is this the way you go through life, your mind

A stopless knife, driven by your fantasy of truth,

Of lasting union—slashing away skin after skin

From things, ruin and tears your only signs

Of progress? Enough is enough.

You must not grieve that the world is glimpsed

Through veils. How else can it be seen?

How will you rip away the veil of the eye, the veil

That you are, you who want to grasp the heart

Of things, hungry to know where meaning

Lies. Taste what you hold in your hands: onion-juice,

Yellow peels, my stinging shreds. You are the one

In pieces. Whatever you meant to love, in meaning to

You changed yourself: you are not who you are,

Your soul cut moment to moment by a blade

Of fresh desire, the ground sown with abandoned skins.

And at your inmost circle, what? A core that is

Not one. Poor fool, you are divided at the heart,

Lost in its maze of chambers, blood, and love,

A heart that will one day beat you to death.

The Couple Next Door

tend their yard every weekend,

when they paint or straighten

the purple fencepickets canting

each other at the edge of their lot,

hammering them down into soil

to stand. How long will they stay

put? My neighbors mend their gate,

hinges rusted to blood-colored dust,

then weave gold party-lights with

orange lobster-nets & blue buoys

along the planks. So much to see

& not see again, each chore undone

before they know it. I love how

faithfully they work their garden

all year, scumbling dried eelgrass

in fall, raking away mulch in spring.

Today the older one, Pat, plants

weeds ripped from a cranberry-bog.

Sassafras & pickerel, black locust

& meadowsweet, wild sarsaparilla,

checkerberry, starflower. Will they

take root here? Meanwhile Chris waters

seeds sown months ago. Furrows

of kale, snap-bean, scallion break

the surface, greedy for life. Muskrose

& lilac cast their last shadows. Is it

seeing or sun that makes them flicker,

as if they’ve vanished? They shake

like a letter in someone’s hand.

Here come the guys from Whorfs

(“Whores”) Court, walking their dog

—also in drag—to the dunes.

I miss seeing Disorient Express

(a.k.a. Cheng, out of drag) walk by,

in tulle & sequins the exact shade

of bok choi. He must have endured

things no one can name, to name only

KS, pneumocystis, aplastic anemia.

I remember he walked off his gurney

when the ambulance came, then broke

his nurse’s fingers in the hospital

when he tried to change his IV line,

wanting to live without meds. Zorivax,

Ativan, leucovorin? I don't know.

Pat & Chris pack down the loose dirt.

I’ll never know what threads hold

our lives together. They kiss, then fall

on the grass. I should look away but don’t.