Finally pulled my thumb out & turned my computer on. So many books to read. Here we have Yoon Yong, mothering doubtfully, exposing her flaws through the flesh she has produced, as the image she produces in her dream. The biological aspect through the child image, becoming psychological to tell the identity where it falls into error. Something like that. I may have got mothering, feminism, love, dream, psychology, all of it wrong, but I could only persevere with the direction I felt, in essence, the most interesting for Yoon Yong as a fiction. Where I fall into error I have my intuitions, but I’d be more than pleased to be pointed out where else.
Her daughter Sarang (Love) appears in a dream
…“How many died of preventable ailments
because of a belief in transcendentalism?”
Her daughter with an adult’s voice
exposing flaws explaining where I steered myself wrong
what I could have done better | differently
—euphemisms | apothegms she couldn’t possibly know
at her young age—I scribbled notes but…
the pen contained only UV ink.
Motherhood is impossible | I worry continually
: I don’t want my Love to grow up to be someone I hate.
Everyone says “it just comes to you | it’s natural.”
I kept telling myself to love
this jaundiced looking ball of wool
& rolls of skin that cackled like a pocket radio.
The primitivism of it suckling hungrily at my swollen nipple
—I wanted to perform the ritual so badly
but it made clear to me how tainted | how cosmopolitan I was
: breast feeding repulsed me | it felt so animal.
Gravid | I pictured my belly’s contents
lift me out my life like a blimp filled with helium & confetti |
rousing me from my apathy like smelling salts |
out my very self—climbing | climbing out | skyward.
I couldn’t stomach Korean food during my pregnancy |
not even the postpartum seaweed soup rich in iron |
the olfactory idiom & lilting made me nauseous
—I craved quiche or omelet | anything yellow…
I read this open-mouthed.
That’s the sort of reading I like to provoke. Always nice to receive news I landed the poem.