This poem is the 1st of a series of poems making a single long poem, which i have called Yoon Yong. I don’t know what to do with it, so I might put a few up here now & then, to see what people think.
The basic outline is that Yoon Yong is a 30 something Korean woman on a weekend trip to Jeju, alone. She works as a translator & is married to an English man. She is conflicted culturally. The poem is a mix of her soliloquies, Jeju scenery & conversations or just quotes from people in her past. Yoon Yong is nothing like my wife.
Flight to Jeju (Friday 7:45 a.m.)
Rising out a futurity of turbid cloud | pulpy buboes
the airplane lances to the sound of applause.
“It baffles me | in spite of the countless daily flights
that take off every hour & break through barricading smog |
that there is not a larger sense of urgency to fix the sky.”
I’m getting out— “we’re nowhere near…”
I’ll sweat it out | not get abroad myself
—i should not spend this time from Seoul | nullifying
myself with psychometric tests | but spend it frivolously
on remembering who I am | spotting the difference
—playing “eye spy with my little eye something beginning with… 유…”
my own interior sister & mother for playmates.
Nor fall in line with the cultural stereotype like
young couples taking in-flight selfies | nuzzled
in the crease of one another’s elbows | dressed
in couple-clothes & silly hats—they look inter-bred |
arms numb with romance.
Yoon Yong is glad to be spared that rigmarole
: I’m not photogenic (“attractive in maturity”)
& he sure as hell isn’t with his serial killer chin
& bitten off gawp | his nondescript hair like a winter lawn
& nose shaped like a syringe—we still look strange
with faces in the same frame | locked smiles |
pretending we’re sooooo happy. “& for whose benefit…?”
This reminds me that im a procrastinator 😳
Sorry. Why’s that?
The collaboration that still hasn’t happened…
OMG just realised it wasn’t this poem. My confusion as id seen a version of this before oops.
O i sent you an early draft didn’t i. Ha. No worries. Life happens.
I clean forgot I was supposed to be looking through this! Sorry! 😦
Looks like I’m not the only one! 😦
I think this is 5th or 6th draft now. No worries though. If you want to read it in its current state let me know.
Wow! Yoon Yong’s refreshingly circumspect and (picturesque!) observations of the couples taking in-flight selfies — and particularly of the reasons her and her husband’s faces don’t lend themselves well to such a ritual — are simply wonderful!
i want the poems to be as introspective as they are laden with imagery. Yoon Yong is a bundle of contradictions. There is an irony to her keen (both inward & outward) eye: that she wanted to be a poet but never felt she met the requirements so became a translator instead, which is really all she needs to do with her good eye to turn her experiences into poems; she’s so close. i don’t know why i like us to see the talents that the protagonist can’t see, it’s cruel really.
What ?
Not sure what you are referring to Alexandra?
For the benefit of the reader, I would say, Daniel. For me, it’s realistic, and I enjoyed the character’s broad underlying resentment. Not that I can relate to that. Ha ha.
Haha yeh, me, i can’t relate to resentment (nudge nudge wink wink).
Yoon Yong is for me a vehicle to express what i think many Korean women bottle up. i have spoken to many Korean women, they interest me more than the men, as they are smarter but have to put on this show; underneath they are seething. Incredible women; they keep this country going, in my opinion. i am sure it can be said for other countries, but Confucianism is a motherf****r, it’s effect runs deep.
[…] The next poem from Yoon Yong, you can read the 1st poem here. […]