Excerpt: When you smear your finger
over the glass corner,
notice the crack,
and dare not tell her
that imperfections are present.
Cast Out of Eden is available at Politics and Prose at https://www.politics-prose.com/book/9781624292323
Tag / poetry
Cast Out of Eden: Words
Excerpt: I breathe not your oxygen,
but the words that fill the gap between us,
cutting off my breath,
forever leaving me gasping for air.
Cast Out of Eden is available at Politics and Prose at https://www.politics-prose.com/book/9781624292323
Cast Out of Eden: Undertow
Excerpt: His words filled the table,
leaving little room for your elbows to rest,
let alone a path for you to leave.
Cast Out of Eden is available at Politics and Prose at https://www.politics-prose.com/book/9781624292323
Cast Out of Eden: Independent
Excerpt: He serves you first
like an unwanted birthday gift.
You smile–
because your mother always told you to do so…
Cast Out of Eden is available at Politics and Prose at https://www.politics-prose.com/book/9781624292323
Cast Out of Eden: Silence is the Wind
Excerpt: Clock ticks each second,
marking each breath you take,
glass cutting your heart,
words throbbing your brain,
with thoughts you dare not repeat…
Cast Out of Eden is available at Politics and Prose at https://www.politics-prose.com/book/9781624292323
Cast Out of Eden Marathon
Get my new book, Cast Out of Eden! It is available for purchase at Politics & Prose
To all the bad times that served not only to sharpen the eyesight, but also give us the resolve to do the things we need to do but are afraid to do.
Poem to be Published in Eunoia Review
I am pleased to announce that the Eunoia Review has accepted my poem “Doll” for publication in late May. Will post when it is available!
Poetry Post-A-Thon: Chaos and Conformity
This one was published in Alaska Women Speak
Chaos and Conformity
The shoes sat orderly on three wood shelves
outside the Korean school
in shades of brown,
with no princesses,
no action figures on them—
nothing to outwardly distinguish one
set from another.
As you enter,
the foreign English language teacher,
you expect the shoes belong to bodies
that are
full of chaos,
full of yells,
full of squeals.
You imagine arms and legs smeared
with paint and paste.
Instead,
the sea of gray and blue shirts,
pants and jumpers,
is a sea of conformity and calm,
shattered by the appearance of
the dissimilar,
the foreign,
of language
and of appearance—
you.
Poetry Post-A-Thon: Bibimbap
Bibimbap
She sees your pale blue eyes
and knows it is your first time.
She seizes your dolsot bibimbap,
out of your reach,
and starts whipping the stone pot
with the metal spoon.
Ne!
Ne!
Ne!
She chants over your stone pot
of cracking rice, vegetables and
hot chili pepper paste.
Trapped, she commandeered your plate,
and you and your fellow patrons
nod and cheer her frenzy on.
As the silver spoon scrapes the pot,
her tongue talks to the concoction
like one of Macbeth’s witches
until the stone pot and the chili
pepper paste mixture are one;
the batter, just the right consistency.
Finally, she ceases to a smile,
surrenders the spoon to the novice
with a bow, and retreats to the kitchen.
Kamsahamnida.
Thank you, you nod and smile,
knowing nothing you do or say
could ever top that act.
Poetry Post-A-Thon: A Greeting at Imjingak
This poem originally appeared in Alaska Women Speak.
A Greeting at Imjingak
She ambled off the tour bus,
like she was crossing over rocks
in a rough river,
one half step at a time.
Glancing outside at the concrete building
like a child greets an amusement park,
she wore at least seventy years
in the lines of her smile,
a face that remembered a time
before the Forgotten War,
when the Koreas were one.
She bows her head,
Annyong hashimnikka,
she says to the young American couple,
the visiting airman and his wife,
stationed at Osan Air Force Base,
who were there because the war
never really ended in peace,
but in an armistice,
a pause in play,
a forgotten war,
between two Cold War superpowers:
one of which no longer exists;
the other whose boots still remain,
generations after they declared victory.
You both stumble and trip in your speech,
over the barbed wire that ties your tongue
and stings your stomach as you attempt
to return the formal, honorific
form of the greeting she used.
Inside you wish you were not there
so maybe she would not be there either.
The South Korean tourists come to Imjingak
to see what they cannot touch,
what they cannot feel,
who they cannot see in the flesh,
of a land that was once theirs,
the men and women who they once knew,
and decades later,
cannot forget.
The Americans come to see the plaques
from each state that gave men in combat,
that mark their success that divided
the Korean brothers and sisters
and repelled Communism to the 38th parallel.
They want to see the Bridge of Freedom
over the Imjin river
that returned their POWs
and ended their battle in the Korean War.
They want to glance at the forbidden land of North Korea,
beyond the fields of tank traps and mines
bearing three languages of warning:
Korean, Chinese and English,
to the concrete no-man’s land created
to keep the fragile peace and division.
Nothing could prepare your gut for that smile,
that glow that greets you at the bus,
the one which seems grateful,
rather than spiteful,
for your continual military presence,
the generation who still wants
your boots on their ground.
You stumble over the wires
that tangle your tongue:
you cannot say it well in Korean;.
you cannot even say it aloud in English.
You are sorry she is there,
and that you are still there,
and the Bridge of Freedom
did not set her free.
J.L. Smith 