“Detonations.” A Poem by Sun Yung Shin

Detonations

If pain makes the body turn to cold flame / If scars are the
photonegatives of suitable decisions / I wrote letter after letter to
the bomb maker /

I attended the bomb makers’ annual ball / Shawls of white grass and
waste and fury / The earth spits its teeth at us / Giant mechanical
hummingbirds fight over all the sugar /

The Koreans scab the Japanese in the sweet cane fields / Modernity
is a rust factory / The hard soft binary / Exoskeletons make war even
harder make our bodies insects and we are home / Lay down your
lances /

All you horses sleep next to your wildness you are the shadow / Ghosts
cocktails moonlight foxfire to read by / everywhere not libraries of
the body /

War the night show the day show the violins / the rubble the child
burials the blood / Hearts the red stop signs / the graves in the air /
your black or blackened hair

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Excerpted from The Wet Hex by Sun Yung Shin. Used with permission of the publisher, Coffee House Press. Copyright 2022 by Sun Yung Shin.