Hyejung Kook's poetry is forthcoming in wildness and has appeared in Verse Daily, the Beloit Poetry Journal, Hanging Loose, the Denver Quarterly, and elsewhere. A Fulbright grantee, she also has received a Kundiman fellowship and a Pushcart Prize nomination. Other works include an essay in The Critical Flame and Flight, a chamber opera libretto commissioned by composer Sarana Chou.



Hyejung Kook

Death Meditations



Imperceptible, the weight of air on our bodies.

Every day, I invite grief in.

Facing anywhere but forward.

The first stage: bloated, blue-black, festering.

My baby, gnawing on a lamb rib, face slicked with grease.

The hollowness of the long bones is their relative strength.

My grandmother wept, seeing three saplings had grown from her mother's grave.

Paler upon paler wash until the brush runs clear.

The leaves scattered in all directions.

For you, who never arrived. For you, who haven't left yet.



Glass: A Journal of Poetry is published monthly by Glass Poetry Press.
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