- Mindful, and: On Nonattachment
Mindful
after Ko Un
Everything outside my houseis my teacher
Master HorseshitMaster CowshitMaster Children’s Freckles
In the middle of the roadtwo dogs humping
I walk the other way
A path had survived from the old daysAt twilight my dead brother stood between two poplarswhich also did not survive
A warship moves through the waternear Paekyong Island in the Yellow Seanot a seagull in sightmy hands holding an empty soju bottlethe sea looking as if someone had disappeared in it [End Page 114]
On Nonattachment
Glass is good.Cool the light slashing down in diagonals from all angles,silent the pope’s scream across a plane of paint.
Let the eye see plainlyhow pain might be stripped from paint:how light and glass will never marry. [End Page 115]
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.