Empty Ring, Nest Fire
My first burnt bark child—flung to the windless flames
Second sly child—dressed for weather, swan skinned
Serpents impress diamonds into my salt shoulders
This composed with the Devil’s black forked feet
He wants them back, sunk in hot white ink
Tentacles; mother-hunger hundred-mouths; the drift and
night-closures
Number one child, the jawbone I packed for you, axe-bright
Number two child, that hard set of hooves, elegant, horse-swift
Recall that one midsummer squall, us the color of water
The shock of hail: the sky astonished, dropping all its blind white
eyes
Copyright © 2015 by Sun Yung Shin. Originally published in Poem-a-Day on November 23, 2015, by the Academy of American Poets.
“The poem is my first attempt to write from my experience of my children growing up and becoming more independent. Like many children in fairy tales, they must go out into a difficult world; it’s hard to begin to let go and I can only hope that I have equipped them with (at least some of) the right things.”
—Sun Yung Shin
Sun Yung Shin
신 선 영 Sun Yung Shin is the author of The Wet Hex (Coffee House Press, 2022) and Unbearable Splendor (Coffee House Press, 2016). She co-directs Poetry Asylum alongside Su Hwang and lives in Minneapolis.