Poetry

John St John photo

By

Therese Young Kim

Autumn Light

In his elegant wool coat and a gray

felt hat tilted over his brow is sitting

an old man on a park bench,

an attendant next to him in pink

babushka wrapped around her face.

His pale hands curled over a cane

he watches the girls run by,

their long tresses flying ablaze

in the falling autumn foliage.

As they fly by like migrating birds

his blue eyes tumble into the pond

of remembering young Natasha

he had left in Russia

to marry Anna in America

long ago.

The autumn light whose memory

of a billion starlets in the Milky ways

it kissed by light years ago now blanched,

lays an oblong shadow behind

his rounded shoulders to lay

its memory there

this autumn day.

September Mysterion

The day started like any other day in lower

Manhattan sidewalks, street vendors filling up

the paper cups like vending machines on the go.

On the Staten Island ferry, an old man carrying

a browned shoeshine box teeters up and down

the tipping aisle, shouting, “Shine your shoes!”

As the ferry glides across the New York Harbor

some commuters are hunched over a newspaper,

some catching a snooze sitting like Buddhas.

It was that innocent morning on the eleventh of

of September when the sky split open, shooting up

epic flames from the towers hit by the planes.

Bodies flew like falling leaves out of windows

with molten steel-beams tumbling into mountains

and mountains of mushroom dust cascading down,

people running down from the hell running them

over, then came down building no.7 as if

in self-immolation

In that chaos no one witnessed the angels fly down

and scoop up thousands of mangled spirits

and carry them heavenward, heavenward —

Nor did anyone see the Statue of Liberty lowering

the burning torch into her arms, weeping

and weeping —

When the towers were gone, leaving the skyline

hollowed and void, the sun drowned into the ocean,

bleeding —

Therese Young Kim

Born in S. Korea, Therese Young Kim studied English and literature in Kyung Hee University in Seoul and worked at Lufthansa ticketing office before coming to America.

She worked as a professional interpreter for over 25 years in New York while immersing herself in poetry and prose in Korean and English, culminating in her literary fiction, Nayoung’s Journey, now seeking representation.

Excerpts of Nayoung’s Journey have recently been published in Tuck Magazine. Her works have also appeared in Korean literary journals, as well as in Rosebud in two different issues and poems in Tuck Magazine and Poetry Pacific.

Her website address: http://yoursentimentalstranger.com/

Her LinkedIn address: http://www.linkedin.com/in/therese-young-kim-43a906114

Publication links: https://tuckmagazine.com/2017/07/14/fiction-forgotten-story-war/

poetrypacific.blogspot.com/2017/05/3-poems-by-therese-young-kim.html

https://tuckmagazine.com/2017/04/05/fiction-8/  https://tuckmagazine.com/2017/01/06/poetry-700/