4 Poems by Joseph Han

Why I Take My Grandmother to Church Every Sunday

 

 

She replaced her husband’s limbs with wood:

broken from doors in past rooms, branches

 

long fallen from bare trees, a leg from the dinner

table. She roped his new limbs into a cross,

 

bore him over shoulder thinking disciple instead

of wife. On her wedding night, she had received

 

a gift of nails – now knowing how to use them.

Rewrite these verses until you can recite

 

His words back. She told me to throw away

every deed of grandfather’s flesh. We propped

 

him against the wall. We found his forgiveness

in our knees. We pray for him, in the name of—

 

she rocked her head, hair fanning his toes.

She asked God to make sure I never became

 

this man, who has long since sank the way drifting

names always do, who I bathe for relief

 

or drown when I drink from her cup of fury.

 

**

 

Mother to Son

 

 

Son, how many times did forcing

our jobs from your mouth

 

shame you—more soju please—

like some growl from your hunger

 

of Benjamin cards? When smoke passes,

—the fire went out—empty

 

dishes left, tips folded under cups

to fill my apron—replace

 

the grill—like the end of some

trick. Let me count the ways

 

I feed us. Son, don’t judge me,

wine-faced from the swig and Xanax

 

generic milligram—refill

our water—nestling lips. My feet

 

hurt. How many times have I flipped

cold tongues? Tables

 

cleared. Everything steams

or sits, waiting to get picked,

 

stabbed, while men hail the black

yakiniku vest, calling here, more

                                                please—

**

 

Prayer for an aspiring K-pop star

 

 

Dear Father of the holy

trinity – SM, YG, JYP                                  

 

Entertainment, blessed be

the fame you deny

 

me yet. I see futures

in music video dance

 

sets, though mother

has scarred my calves

 

for every study failure;

father has pulled

 

my hair to match leaves

from willow trees.

 

Dearest Father above

them both, when will others

 

mock my dance? The stars

have stolen my teeth

 

from every camera smile.

I’m cursed with bad skin:

 

I will make the cut –

my old pelt ribbons,

 

a bundle of wood shavings

looping onto the floor.

 

I am a ruby underneath

waiting to renew.

 

Hold me up against full

spectrum light

 

and watch it sing

right through.

**

 

Zither

 

 

You spit in my mouth when I have you, a cigarette I crave

 

but only smoke on the weekend. I pluck my memory of you

 

through strands: my gayageum sings, smoke rising in slow tempos moving fast

 

over strings for every month passing in tempo to arrive at the view

 

of a waterfall – though we never made a year. Playing is not

 

about relaxing, but releasing energy into fingers, gayageum is earth,

 

the backboard is sky while I find a crescent moon and the sun

 

in cliché curves of your body. I collect your moan clouding

 

under my tongue: a leaf on water while paper continues to burn:

 

as your nails rake my back and arms, knives to a page

 

bending my body into a crane. I echo while losing ways to sing –hollowed

 

in quiet vibrations. How easy you make me crumble.

 

**

 

Joseph Han was born in Seoul, Korea and raised in Honolulu, Hawaiʻi. His recent work is forthcoming in AAWW’s The Margins, while other writing has appeared in poets.org, Connotation Press, Mascara Literary Review, and Eclectica Magazine. He is currently pursuing a Ph.D. in English at the University of Hawaiʻi-Mānoa. He is the author of a poetry chapbook, Orphan (Tinfish Press 2015). He tweets @hanjoseph.