Young Writers Society

april 6.

one stop on our road trip west - june 16th

capitol reef is nothing like a reef
unless we are coral, leaving our bones out to dry
next to expensive camera lenses and cheap gas station caps
soaked through with head sweat - ac out at noon -
we will into a sheen of salt on sunburning cheeks
as we are splay, moored to the canyon shelves.

complementary deep blue sky is bright for cumulative clouds
while it is too hot to touch and too heavy to speak,
so i hum to you and hear your buzz come back
through eons of stonelayers beneath us -- "yes, even now".

april 6.

a farewell must precede our meeting

someday when i am intoxicated
i will tell you proudly how i have filled
a book to the creases with scraps of thoughts of you
and how i discovered that you slip easily
into any frame i shape, any canvas, any phrase.

phrases like god i am grasping at straws
and shiver to think of the day they are given freely,
unless maybe just maybe they are for that all the softer --

a light knocking at the door with drawn blinds
to block out a hangover and you slip in silently
to where you have always belonged.

april 7.

여름 여행 다니다가 일어난 한 순간

캐피털 리프는 아예 암초답지 않다.
우리는 산호가 아닌다면...

넓혔다.
뼈를 말라 버리게
협곡의 선반위에 잡아맨 우리가
비싼 카메라 랜즈와
머리 땀으로 흠뻑 젖은 싸구려 야구 모자 옆에서
타버려 가는 우리 볼위에
땀이 소금 되길 바랜다.

보색의 깊고 푸른 하늘은
소집하는 구름 덕에 밝다.
만지적하기엔 너무 덥고
말하기엔 너무 무거우니까
너에개 콧노래하는데 니 답 노래는
우리 밑에 쌓인 연겁들의 돌겹들을
통해서 들린다:
"어, 그래, 지금도."

april 8.

Y.H.

everything i run through a function of you
and every last output the same:
the future the future the future is bright.
on my lips is the taste of your name.

april 9.

A Vignette of the Moment of Betrayal Made Known

Unknown until it is known
how the bullet sears through heart muscle
but you are left standing and shaking
and beating out blood and time does not stop.

Unknown until it is known
the blistering heat
in knees with no will to stand
but you keep walking
until the skin shreds off.

Unknown until it is known
how quickly precious words turn poison
and how poison rings over and over in silence:
"Since we first met, since we first met".
Overused and a shredded joke
mixed in with discarded parts of you.

Unknown until it is known
how deep heartache burrows into bone.

april 10.

you piece of shit

씨 같은 걸 한 줄 한 줄 써서 주고 받았는데
발 걸음 이 다가 오는 그 순간에

새 로운 면을 보게 되네
끼 로 극복학 수 없는 벽

you piece of shit

Best title ever.

april 14.

squall and away

in west suwon, rumbles of
strong wind . burnblack clouds . water in the air .
every bone, each ligament wakeful for the storm

but sinister, insidious
a different storm has come and gone
trees downed , eyes downed , hearts downed //
drowned . storm drains fail and flood,
throats caught full of fall leaves crushed

tamped down grass and trampled thirst.
gas mains break and char from toes
to stifled chest - calescent as each moment,
examined for tender spots, is discovered
to crumble to ash . in shaking palms.

sifting . . .

ashen air . burnblack clouds . lights gone out
of eyes and lives

april is the cruellest month
and here the dead are burned.

april 14.

a running river

when we first met,
i built a dam that afternoon
in birch stream out back.

there was the boulder
i would dive from on hot five-year-old
summernoons, as big as ever --
so i made it the dam's center
and dedicated nostalgia to you.

weekdays weekends nights dawns
i could never rest easy,
always out to check if if maybe
the dam was still there.
weekdays weekends cool warm
it stood ever strong

a pool fondly formed behind it.

plans:
- swan boats
- rod fishing
- swimming in t-shirts
- providing for the thirsty with our growing overflow

reality:

you came one deep midnight
and with one swing of a sledgehammer
i never even knew you owned...

present:

i am sitting on the bank
watching water curve around
the tool's handle, sticking out of the mud,
out of the trickle of creek.

april 16.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ew74X5z3Rgo

weeks are 168 hours long

each hour a step away, beyond,
each step three-quarters of a meter,
and a week has brought a body, effectively,
126 meters from you,
your voice on the wind but with the flavor of fading.

and though first haunted dreams were heavy
to drag through workdays and empty homecomings,
you are smaller each day, each pace away.

for 168 hours, i have palmsweated our last instant photo
until my knuckles no longer bleed, and though
palm-readings are shrouded in brown blood crusts,
it feels good knowing you won't see it again.

i won't see you again.


in another week, no voice on the wind,
no facial details, and the scabs will fall off,
leaving a bright, blazing palm, renewed.

Summernoons? That's my new favourite word. These are beautiful and just really light and easy to read which is so nice.

There's a quality in your poetry that makes it always feel like there's some deep backstory seeping out from the corners and in between the lines. I really like it.

april 17.

tell summer that i died

when in the long shadow evening highsummer comes to knock,
the stained striped blinds will have already been stapled into the drywall,
and the pot for sweet tea will be sending up lazy, surreptitious steam.

these are the blinds picked out together on a spring chillmorning,
the sweet tea for which the recipe was fished out from an antique cookbook
in the attic of the first room we'd been in together, alone.

but in the seasonal transition, what was lost was not just cherry blossom petals,
but loyalty and upturned eyes -- the smile from just seeing, and so
when in the long shadow evening highsummer comes to knock
turn and tell him it is far,
_________________________far
_______________________________too late.

april 17.

uprooted

Thistle-whisperers tight in periwinkle,
tossing heads . one side grand ideas, one side dreams.
Culled - dirt shakes loose from roots, green waists shake and shudder.
The rooster tells secrets in his subtle inhalation-song:
they are going somewhere, they are going there.

Lighted to the sky, tight in periwinkle,
they shrillscream envy at those unculled --
"We are going where, we are going where?

Why does the sky hide coins in the corners of his cheeks?
Why does he melt them and reform them?

Where are his hands taking us and
is there music there?"


Thistle-whispers once tight in periwinkle
have husked and wilted --
small, lavender petals pepper on an empty bedside table.

There is the smell of tears and cracked glass
and seeing oneself alone for the first time,
free from grand ideas, free from dreams.

The rooster tells secrets, he says
you are going somewhere, you are there.

april 18.

Saturn and You

These days are all rainy days with trash fires --
too many scents to count, running my thumbs
along rough weeds stuffed in roadside cracks --
and I cannot help but think of you.

What told you you could hold my hand and
run your fingers through my hair? You pretend
to ask, but crawl forward when I stumble
on an answer. You backed me into corners
and I smiled, thought it was love.

My memory of you is tied up with visions of Saturn
I have seen in mountaintop observatories --
it is real, it is real, it is real!! --
like every textbook had described in yellow orbits,
that ring of legend.

And you, like a cat,
pulled the thin daisy string to your back teeth
and chewed through with a ligament snap.
So, you slid back to boredom,
and I was left trying to find a pinprick in a telescope
in the midst of a big, dark sky. What I found was,
after all, that it was only and wholly a blind sort of fear,
and putting Space between you and I brought hurt
that was real, that was real, that was real.