Psalm

Eunsong Kim

you don’t have to study to have
regardless of work there is a home
love is not a condition for safety
survival is possible so survival is guaranteed
more

is sequestered
punishment is what was once enacted but
can no longer be imagined.
an enlarged footnote—for memories
Love is not the condition for safety
but becomes a possibility

Amen

On Endings & Longing

You spend too much time watching detective television. You like procedurals because it feels like ideal work: there is movement and there is predictability. The formulas go as such: One, the detective is a smart, elusively attractive thirty-something year old with attachment issues. Two, the serial killer and/or one-off criminal becomes their fixation. Three, evidence is gathered, presented, refuted, and reorganized so that four, the criminal can be caught, incarcerated. You understand after some time that the only way the episode/program will conclude is if the criminal is captured.

Eunsong Kim

2020

In English for Clarity

The remnants I no longer believe the words that float inside without the pretension of release Father your loneliness this empty church is my answer my mother All that is destroyed is my love don’t ask don’t repeat tell me I treasure the copies with original envy with majesty reserved for a tourist this way when I say help you cannot pretend to misunderstand you cannot turn to the other two in a different language and respond simply with How still you feel How closely this resembles love. Father even violence can be redeemed this way. When enclosed in this much solitude.

Eunsong Kim

2017

[asian]

asian

—alienate

& mystify

feels like

but has never been yours speech that could be a poem
if written by you:
conduit for reserved for

for whom does your body make easy

—american.

Eunsong Kim

2017

Poems

Psalm

More by this poet

On Endings & Longing

In English for Clarity

[asian]

Poems

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Psalm

More by this poet

On Endings & Longing

In English for Clarity

[asian]

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