We never buried that house right,
bodies waning
under the gibbous violence of its roofs.
All summer long, the canary
never stops singing. The shed
in the yard blows its bulbs,
a single glare of ochre light,
and at nightfall another child goes missing. I hang
the posters on every second lamp post
down the street: past the chalk-skinned
memorials of middle school games,
blacktop maw everywhere below me.
This town won’t ever change.
The power lines sing me electric
and starving both—perhaps
I did not claim my tongue a single time
that strange-bellied summer. Again
the sky blinks down at us, highest point
folding over to praise the horizon,
a slow pilgrimage across itself
and back again. Not unlike journeys made
to leave ourselves behind, in which we are
bloated with the childhoods
yet to be smudged off. The homes we grew up in
and failed to leave
offerings for. I strain the inherited marrow
from my mother’s bones, glut myself
on steak cooked bleu. The kinds of things we do
for hunger. I tell the neighbors
I want to grow up
thin and tough and famished
the way the townie boys like best. Last night
I dreamt about living past
the age of girlhood. On waking, every room
was a mouth and the hinges opened their throats,
creaking wide in conjoined prayer.
Some places are more ghost
than woman.

About the Author
Eunice Kim is a Korean-American writer living in Seoul. Her work has been published or is forthcoming in Vagabond City Lit, Sonora Review, Barren Magazine, Young Poets Network and more.