Ancestry laid upon a curse, a jinx
Blood, and another thing molten—reveries of my face, the façade behind my face
Called to account the countries, deviations of echolocations:
Dead—mine—dark-detained
Ever banked in an ethnographic afterlife.
Fell—deep sleep postponing my rewrite, rotate, mutate;
Genes to be circumnavigated by spit-polished explorers.
How is a child’s globe a work of colonial conditioning?
In this condition, the wet hex in miniature
Jumps from gene sequence to succession. Pattern recognition:
Kinship, failing upriver—descent—
Life maps itself in vials sent via the real
Mail, archaic method homesick for the gold horses of its origins.
Never miscalculate genealogical disruption’s (in)ability;
Orphan your ancestors in the underworld; above—who tends graves,
Pours the prayer of soju when the dead need music. Shall this be our final
Quarry, silent as a doe and daughter,
Reading the light, sewing a shade; a haunting
Sold to a centrifuge, the sterile shine of its exposed aperture—now
Travel to the Neander Tal; witness the heavy-brow-boned branch fork and break. Our dead
Underestimate us, time machines drifting at the rate of future’s arrival,
Venn diagrams of past and speculation
Where will we repose. Collected. Finger- and jawbone; dusted dictionary
Xenomorph, alien self, foreign
You, incarnate in the disciplined nation of the contemporaneous; stranger
Zealous for the sweet peace of the unborn, as yet unburied.
Sun Yung Shin is a Korean-born poet, writer, collaborative artist, and body-worker. She/they lives in Minneapolis.
Used by permission from The Wet Hex (Coffee House Press, 2022). Copyright © 2022 by Sun Yun Shin.
Sun Yung Shin’s latest book is The Wet Hex Visit with her/them and her/their work at the Miami Book Fair 2022 on 11/20 at 3:30 pm in Room 6100. Cover art by: Coffee House Press.
Welcome to SWWIM Every Day’s preview coverage of Miami Book Fair (MBF) 2021! The poets whose work you’ll be reading every weekday from October 25 through November 12 are just a few of the many authors from around the world participating in this year’s MBF, the nation’s largest gathering of writers and readers of all ages. They all look forward to sharing their work, thoughts, and ideas both in person and online. Between November 14 and November 21, new poet conversations and readings will be launched and available for free on miamibookfaironline.com (in addition to other content). For more information, visit the website and follow MBF on Instagram and Twitter at @miamibookfair and use the hashtag #miamibookfair2021.