Romance #1
like some 14 year old girl waiting for her crush to glance back i
keep waiting for capitalism to end
but it won’t end
my adult life lover states
on what will end:
Libraries
Birds
Retirement
Recess
Sprinting during recess
Hispid Hares
Starfish shaped like stars
Inconvenience
Wrinkles
Sunken cheeks
Living corals
Protests
Anti-Nuclear Proliferation
Non-Aggression Pacts
Dragonflies
Mangosteen
DMZs
Trade Embargos
Leopards, all kinds
Sawfins
Rewilding
Infiltration Plot/Dreams
Oak, Trees.
Partulina Variabilis
Partulina Splendida
(-------) Violence Prevention Programs
News. News:
Might a few jellyfish survive—
counting till revelations becomes part of—
Copyright © 2019 by Eunsong Kim. Originally published in Poem-a-Day on June 28, 2019, by the Academy of American Poets.
“I’ve been writing and adding to this poem for several years now. The poem is part challenge and provocation, part tribute and elegy to how life and extinction continue to be fantasized. It is titled ‘Romance #1’ because romance is an all-encompassing venture: all the emotions, all the body. '#1' because this is only the first part, yes? This cannot be the ending. Yes?”
—Eunsong Kim
Eunsong Kim
Eunsong Kim is the author of gospel of regicide (Noemi Press, 2017) and the co-translator, with Sung Gi Kim, of Kim Eon Hee’s Have You Been Feeling Blue These Days? (Noemi Press, 2019).