It was past cicada season every one
fallen to crush from their ephemeral roosts.

The leaves halfway to yellow
shimmied in the street light.

When we were almost home,
when we passed the community center,

a hundred women rose up,
elbow deep in salt and cabbage,

from where they had been bent
over huge plastic buckets

sweet rice flour, ginger, radish,
carrot, green onions, peppers

& salted shrimp blended into paste
gloved hands coating every leaf.

I was and had always been an alien there.
Here, I'm mostly turkey vulture, obsessed

with circling my dead, most translations of me
fall apart if you put them through the wash,

my tongue lonesome for a lost language
of chilis. I miss persimmons, pears as round

as my face. I miss cones of steaming bundaegi,
Korean steam rising up from Korean city grates.

Streets lined with yellow gingko, aunties
who perfume buses after filling plastic baggies

with sidewalk plucked gingko fruit. I miss subway cars
and a hundred bodies pressed into mine, sticky rice.

Back then our trips to walk Bukhansan's winter
ridges felt nothing like this early Kentucky spring,

the mist on the palisades doing a little to make me feel
kindred here, but I'm still hungry for home.

So I did what I could, I built me some planter boxes,
tried for the first time for kale, broccoli,

squash, peas. Long stretch of nothing,
then before I knew it the caterpillars gorged

themselves on green. Holes in every leaf.
I ruin everything. The monk and chef, Jeong Kwan,

says she willingly shares her bounty
with the bugs, the hares, that there is enough

to go around, for everyone to be filled.
Through fall, matriarchs of Korea watch

the weather, pool together ingredients gathered
through the prior seasons, finally to glory

in kimchi, days to make what will last everyone
through the coming year. It's true, there are enough buckets

to hold every napa cabbage leaf.
I've seen a body of women work

to soften and soak, wait patiently
until it's sour enough. I've witnessed them

tending to the spoil. So even though I'm alone,
I ruin my blender on baggies of garlic, onion, apple or pear,

dream of teaching my daughter what I've learned
from these my borrowed ancestors, generous neighbors:

how and when to mix in the sweet rice paste, what brand of saeujeot
and fish sauce to buy. How much gochugaru, chives. I stain my fingers

because I don't have ajjuma rubber gloves,
but I can wait for the bubbles in the glass jars to rise,

a choir swelling my hallelujah and stank,
and what always makes enough to share.

Kristina Erny

< Back | Next >

Table of Contents