I am taken with the hot animal
of my skin, grateful to swing my limbs

and have them move as I intend, though
my knee, though my shoulder, though something
is torn or tearing. Today, a dozen squid, dead

on the harbor beach: one mostly buried,
one with skin empty as a shell and hollow

feeling, and, though the tentacles look soft,
I do not touch them. I imagine they
were startled to find themselves in the sun.

I imagine the tide simply went out
without them. I imagine they cannot

feel the black flies charting the raised hills
of their eyes. I write my name in the sand:
Donika Kelly. I watch eighteen seagulls

skim the sandbar and lift low in the sky.
I pick up a pebble that looks like a green egg.

To the ditch lily I say I am in love.
To the Jeep parked haphazardly on the narrow
street I am in love. To the roses, white

petals rimmed brown, to the yellow lined
pavement, to the house trimmed in gold I am

in love. I shout with the rough calculus
of walking. Just let me find my way back,
let me move like a tide come in.

As a child I made things 
out of clay—a pig who

could not be eaten, a mule  
who refused to carry

anything other than a pig 
who could not be eaten.

They were companion 
pieces. They kept each

other company, and me. 
We kept each other’s

secrets: what flesh can 
do with clay, what clay

can do that flesh can’t. 
I was a small child who made

small decisions. I made big  
people angry. I made them

confused. I 
refuse, I refuse.

I burned my life, that I might find 
A passion wholly of the mind, 
Thought divorced from eye and bone, 
Ecstasy come to breath alone. 
I broke my life, to seek relief 
From the flawed light of love and grief.

With mounting beat the utter fire 
Charred existence and desire. 
It died low, ceased its sudden thresh.
I found unmysterious flesh—
Not the mind’s avid substance—still
Passionate beyond the will.

1. come. pray. know histories. today

                   is mother’s birthday. she insists on

                   dying. offer her a framed memory, 

                   her maiden name clotted in a map older

                   than “america.” she will refuse, turn

                   away. grief sharpens the gales of wit.

                   again, she abandons.

2. a twice born girl knows to rotate a tomb, 

                   suspend mother’s crude gape, temper

                   a piston with cane syrup. terror is the knotty

                   clutch of an umbilical cord, an archive pulsing

                   with the carriage

                   of empires. 

^{translated from the Korean by Younghill Kang}

If you were a love, you would love me, but every night
   outside the window you make the sound of footsteps alone;
     without once entering you go back. Is that love?

But never once have I made footsteps outside love’s window.
Perhaps love stays in the lover alone.
Ah! ah! but if there had been no sound of footsteps,
   the dream would not have been startled awake,
      it would have continued to mount into the clouds, seeking you.

꿈 깨고서

님이면은 나를 사랑하련마는 밤마다 문밖에 와서 발자취소리만 내이고 한번도 들어오지 아니하고 도로 가니 그것이 사랑인가요 
그러나 나는 발자취나마 님의 문밖에 가본 적이 없습니다 
아마 사랑은 님에게만 있나봐요 

아아 발자취소리나 아니더면 꿈이나 아니깨었으련마는 
꿈은 님을 찾아가려고 구름을 탔었어요