Emily Jungmin Yoon

In my country our shamans were women and our gods multiple until white people brought an ecstasy of rosaries and our cities today glow with crosses like graveyards. As a child in Sunday school I was told I’d go to hell if I didn’t believe in God. Our teacher was a woman whose daughters wanted to be nuns and I asked What about babies and what about Buddha, and she said They’re in hell too and so I memorized prayers and recited them in front of women I did not believe in.Deliver us from evil. O sweet Virgin Mary, amen

There was a man. A Japanese soldier. One that did not believe in old superstitions. One that did not believe in sex before battle as charm against harm. He was an odd man. One that did not carry an amulet with pubic hair of a comfort woman. Or any piece of her. His comrades said,Be a man. The equation is, an odd man out is not man. There is no reason for logic in war. There is no reason. There was a man. His comrades said,Come raid, come pillage. Pushed him into the station. Their eyes on the holes in the wall. Watched as he came. Became. What is the equation here. There is a no equation. There was a man. One who said weeping,I am not a man, I am not a man.

She is girl. She is gravel. She is grabbed. She is grabbed like handfuls of gravel. Gravel grated by water. Her village is full of gravel fields. It is 1950. She is girl. She is grabbed. She is not my grandmother, though my grandmother is girl. My grandmother’s father closes the gates. Against American soldiers, though they jump over stone walls. To a girl who is not my grandmother. The girl is gravel grabbed. Her language is gravel because it means nothing. Hands full of girl. Fields full of gravel. Korea is gravel and graves. Girl is girl and she will never be a grandmother. She will be girl, girl is gravel and history will skip her like stone over water. Oh girl, oh glory. Girl.

my school teacher          asked me     if I wanted to go to Japan      do something good for the Emperor we were led to a harbor a cargo ship    a train to a factory in Doyamaki             where Food was so scarce    we pulled grass, roots anything we could eat girls died of hunger    some went crazy I ran away   was found   by a Japanese soldier Kobayashi took me to a hut            Every evening soldiers countless soldiers        on the wild mountainside Kobayashi An unusually quiet day I found Japan had lost the war I sailed to Korea jumped from the crates   hit my stomach with fists I failed            I named him Young-ju left him at an orphanage met him every Sunday one Sunday I saw another boy in his clothes Young-ju had died of pneumonia already buried I thought of Kobayashi bringing me rice in his drunken stupor                         I thought of the piece of steel I took    at the factory I found some of the steel            so attractive I still believe      he is alive somewhere                 I want to believe that all was just a terrible       fate But then, But then

I read a Korean poem with the line “Today you are the youngest you will ever be.” Today I am the oldest I have been. Today we drink buckwheat tea. Today I have heat in my apartment. Today I think about the word chada in Korean. It means cold. It means to be filled with. It means to kick. To wear. Today we’re worn. Today you wear the cold. Your chilled skin. My heart knocks on my skin. Someone said winter has broken his windows. The heat inside and the cold outside sent lightning across glass. Today my heart wears you like curtains. Today it fills with you. The window in my room is full of leaves ready to fall.Chada, you say.It’s tea. We drink. It is cold outside.

When I was laughed at for my clumsy English, I touched my throat. Which said ear when my ear said year and year after year I pronounced a new thing wrong and other throats laughed. Elevator. Library. Vibrating bells in their mouths. How to say azalea. How to say forsythia. Say instead golden bells. Say I’m inESL. In French class a boy whose last name is Kring called me belle. Called me by my Korean name, pronouncing it wrong. Called it loudly, called attention to my alien. (I touched the globe moving in my throat, a hemisphere sinking.) Called me across the field lined with golden bells. I wanted to run and be loved at the same time. By Kring. As in ring of people.Where are you going? We’re laughing with you. The bell in our throat that rings with laughter is called uvula. From uva: grape. A theory: special to our species, this grape-bell has to do with speech. Which separates us from animals. Kring looked at me and said Just curious, do you eat dogs? and I wanted to end my small life. Be reborn a golden retriever of North America. Lie on a field lined with golden bells, loved. Today, in a country where dogs are more cherished than a foreign child, an Oregon Senate candidate says no to refugees. Says, years ago, Vietnamese refugees ate dogs, harvested other people’s pets.Harvest as in harvest grapes. Harvest as in harvest a field of golden rice. As do people from rice countries. As in people-eat-dog worlds. Years ago, 1923 Japan, the phrase jūgoen gojissen was used to set apart Koreans: say 15yen50sen. The colonized who used the chaos of the Kanto Earthquake to poison waters, set fire: a cruelty special to our species. A cruelty special to our species — how to say jūgo, how to say gojit, how jūgo sounds like die in Korean, how gojit sounds like lie— lie, lie, library, azalea, library. I’m going to the library, I lied, years ago, on a field lined with forsythia.

The alcove of your arm has become my favorite room for sleep, but I’ve been roused by nightmares lately.Even thunderstorms couldn’t wake you