Myung Mi Kim

where the route of a ship bringing tax grain from the provinces is described where perceived hindering—say, birds congregating on a runway where the first request was for fertilizer and seeds where the instruction—harness these to the benefit of your society where the conscription continued where boards of revenue where basically, everyone had a plant job where preventable diseases rampant where the need is window screens and sewer covers where for the good of the very few and the suffering of a great many

“peacekeeping troops” “tanks beneath the windows” The inside of someone else’s dwelling visible — a table and some chairs. You start to count one, two, three, four . . . until the explosion is near your neighborhood. You can guess the position of mortar by this counting and try to find a safe place. If the windows are gone, weak plastic is taped up but the strong wind comes and we stay awake. In this South Cholla Province where all vehicles had been confiscated, we resorted to walking, the method of travel of the Yi Dynasty. We reverted back 300 years. Kwangju, 1980 It’s the same to be in the house, at the shelter or anywhere. There is no safe place. When we have no electricity, we are sitting in the dark and we know what life looked like before Christ. Sarajevo, 1992

habitation, wooden crate in a nameless territory dented objects for gathering water plastic footwear two sizes too small, how the cracked heels hang over the vine suggests sweet potato but notice the cradle of thorns skiff ferry            militarized eradication’s resourcefulness speaking in a high prestige language jaundice shade of bombardment singed skin grapheme between ribs     what might be shale the mother who isn’t the father who isn’t ramshackle peony meridian bit in the mouth

In what way names were applied to things. Filtration. Not every word that has been applied, still exists. Through proliferation and differentiation. Airborn. Here, this speck and this speck you missed. Numbers in cell division. Spheres of doubt. The paradigm’s stitchery of unrelated points. What escapes like so much cotton batting. The building, rather, in flames. Does flight happen in an order. Dates to impugn and divluge. The laws were written on twelve tablets of bronze which were fastened to the rostra. Trembling hold. Manner of variation and shift. Vacillation hung by tactile and auditory cues.

accumulation of land              maintain household bear      labor of house child cooking reserve line               belonging to                        elaborate isolation familias implements               enemies captured in war      bearing child rearing production heirs number         and rear household             family contains counting herds possessions     fellow feeling crude             isolate care family contains in germ          bearing rearing                   accumulation of land implements of production       cooking reserve line of        the number belonging counting possessions              heirs                                  the captured isolated                                 household bear                  rear heirs feeling crude                         belonging to                       fellow feeling crude