from "Three Demons": Sanki Series I

               Machine
guns
between their brows—

blood flowers bloom.

 

               Child of summer
dawn—

               tracing
horses in the mud.

 

               Midnight

               Skylarks

under storm, ferrying

               bodies one
by one.

 

               Rage

Volcanic
               ash

covered highlands:

               jittery dance
of
the jewel beetle.

 

Sunflower

               petals,
falling on a

black mass
               of

ants.

Copyright © 2019 Ryan C. K. Choi. This poem originally appeared in Kenyon Review, May/June 2019. Reprinted with permission of the author.