On Sleep

There is always too little. The tea-stained tablecloth creases
where my hand rests. My head wilts. I sit and sit (my body
grows over the hide of the chair). To me, it seems the body
knows what it is to forget. Aroma of apple and figs and a memory
draw blush from my cheek. Not unlike the time I watched

the wind going and going, and taking with it bellyfuls of millet.
My mother in the other room is stirring a saucepan, making
round sounds. I lived unaware of how the stunning bird offered
herself to the bluff. Her milk-wings, umbrellas, folding.

On my left, a breeze drums the padlock. The fruits roll
onto their softened sides. I hear booted mudfeet at the door.
Ants cross water. The knives tune themselves. The jug
(open with its handle bent on its high hip wants to say
something about seeing truth). I am sick in my own way.


EJ Koh is a poet, translator of Korean poetry, and author of the experimental novel, Red. Her poems have appeared in Columbia Review, The Anthology of Surveillance Poetics, and others. She was awarded the Kundiman and MacDowell Colony Fellowships. She has been featured in magazines across the country.