What Mattered

When my father left, 
his old leather couch 
kept his shape. 
When I climbed up 
in my Sunday dress,
it was safe.
His absence held me 
like a throne.

He was dead, or gone.
My mother saw me, or not.
Jesus was coming 
or he wasn’t.
Eventually, it didn’t matter. 

What mattered was my body 
perched on the hill 
behind our house
atop the emptying field
in spite of everything,

What mattered were the unseen
creatures that burrowed 
beneath the hill, grinding forward
in the darkness.

What mattered was the familiar
hum of my own hunger, 
how long I could go
without

as somewhere else,
loaves and fishes 
multiplied.

---

Joan Kwon Glass is a biracial (Korean/Caucasian) second generation American who lives near New Haven, CT. Her poems have recently been published or are upcoming in Sublunary Review, FEED, Anti-Heroin Chic, Ghost City Review, Rise Up Review, Dying Dahlia Review, Black Napkin Press, Vagabond City Lit, TRIVIA: Voices of Feminism, Literary Mama, the print anthology Shimmer Spring, and others. Her poem “Bathing Scene” was featured on the Saturday Poetry Series: Poetry as it Ought to Be, and her poem “Cartouche,” was nominated for a Pushcart Prize.