by Rachel Kuanneng Lee
By the old grown temple green
on the sloping mountainside,
on my silent walks I find
a trampoline—one just big enough
for a lonesome ride. One, two,
three, four—I bounce
the world aside. Dizzy, whizzy,
now we’re drunk, drinking deep
from cups of oblivion, drowning
in the dreamless Seoul city lights.
Always, you spoke of
one hope for that crowning
glory. Sleepless, you chased it
down, searching for rivers of
milk and honey. And then one day,
your head’s lopped off and
gone to hell, your fingers stained
with turpentine. You scour
but the stench remains, you scrub
but already it is in vain. Five, six,
seven, eight—the known becomes
a blur. Their eyes are blown with brackish
waters, their feet logged in the deep.
the shaman sings a song of power,
under the sea, the three hundred sleep.
What is this odor? Sick and sweet, I say.
It is the Han, its grey scent long
overflown onto Gwanghwamun square.
Is it the poor dead returned or
do I snort the snuff of money?
Nine, ten, eleven, twelve—get high
to leave behind. Have you buried
the ladder, thrown in the trowel,
pulled plug on the race of life? Oh darling,
perhaps one more will do, just one long
shot to survive.
Rachel Kuanneng Lee has lived in Singapore and South Korea. Her work appears in or is forthcoming at Quarterly Literary Review Singapore, carte blanche, wildness, trampset, No Contact, Sky Island Journal, and elsewhere. She was a finalist for the Live Canon 2020 competition and is a Brooklyn Poets Fellow. She is also co-founder of a data science startup and hopes that someday, she might be able to make a coherent narrative out of her career choices, even if today is not quite that day. You can find her online at rachel-lee.me.