할머니
할머니 By Grace Moon Meharg 할머니 no longer belongs just to me.Out of every man, woman, and childthe word slips from open mouthscasually, carelessly. Their teeth barely catching its edge. She was Halmoni and she was mine,growing into a god.Framed by a halo of storiessown by the lips of my mother. Grandmotherborn of her daughter, deliveredto the girl whoshares her name. I climb my roots across the ocean. Reaching within and without,glimpsing her in roses,curved backs in the market.The mountains gaze at us both. There’s so muchI remember I’ve forgotten.As stories start to fadethe gaps gain flesh and earth. Our bodies meet in Jeonju. My soles where my mother began.The air wrinklestogether. Three generations.One pair of shoes. [Featured photo by Kierstin Conaway]
Syllable
I asked my mother the Korean word for nectarine and she told me 천도복숭아, heavenly peach. And I recognized the angel there, though she wouldn’t have believed I knew her. I had heard her on the phone one room over, unripe and glorious like a child playacting stone fruit, head held between summer-bare knees acting out being eaten remaining whole. By Sarah Berg
A Love Poem for Someone I Left, or
Photo by Zoya Hsiao 10 places I want to be with you— sitting on the same massage chair, legs compressed by legs no money to afford our own, but in the 러브호텔 we can pretend on the second floor of a ramen shop or Indian restaurant shrouded in incense or smoke from your cigarettes on a stroll, seaside or on a bike, tandem on a mountain in a car—hands overlapping, fingers entwined when not, 잠깐만 in a kitchen, curry on the stovetop fried chicken delivery (just in case) 대마도 one more journey together, before I left the ferry, you promised battling aliens in outer space dancing on the moon like in your dreams beneath a pine tree 다음 생에 where I’ll fall asleep again in the shade of you in a plane, not an airport not even the shuttle bus to the airport not even in love four years ago four years from now forever Maggie Deagon was a 2016 – 2017 ETA at Jeju Jungang Girls High School in Jeju City. When she is not writing poems about lost love, she is chronicling her wandering food adventures at femalegraze.food.blog.