Mindful

ISSUE: Spring 2016

after Ko Un

Everything outside my house
is my teacher

Master Horseshit
Master Cowshit
Master Children’s Freckles

—

In the middle of the road
two dogs humping

I walk the other way

—

A path had survived from the old days
At twilight my dead brother stood between two poplars
which also did not survive

—

A warship moves through the water
near Paekyong Island in the Yellow Sea
not a seagull in sight
my hands holding an empty soju bottle
the sea looking as if someone had disappeared in it

Suji Kwock Kim

Suji Kwock Kim is the author of the poetry collections Disorient (forthcoming) and Notes from the Divided Country (Louisiana State, 2003), which won the Walt Whitman Award from the Academy of American Poets, the Addison M. Metcalf Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, and the Whiting Writers’ Award. She is the recipient of fellowships from the NEA, Fulbright/IIE, and the Association for Asian Studies.