Whole Coconut Chapbook One
For my family.
Copyright © Sueyeun Juliette Lee, 2005
Some of these poems have previously
appeared in XConnect and Coconut.
The things possible to have said, uncurled in a swallowed sound
I am of you and different.
My name follows the shadow of yours
catches shade in a valley of bees
We are meant to move forward without assistance
but lacking little light we turned and fled
you have worn many names and faces, sir
to say you are undisciplined is a love of lies
your expectation wavers with the sky turning
what they all worked hard for stops
dark mountains, coughing
a sharp night’s silence
no longer a child
orphan, stoic, doctor, sir
firstborn
first abroad
first lost
as a child, I spoke as a child
abba
aboji
distance is relative, hinged
joints bend where other spaces would break
forced into a posture, object
stars move slowly across the sky’s face
this is now something recognized on a screen
I am to say
who was but until the present never could be
he is a good man
I see and hear everything.
I see and hear you.
speak as simply as you can
without fire these words nearly sleep
the distance between
a shade platform
a scheduled announcement
faces fanning in the heat
louder than the eyes having it
louder than the deer giving up its secrets on the tree
quietly we crawl under our covers, three in a bed
the house stands still after hours of unrest
delicate as folding screens these turns burn our faces shut
we hear and see but do not speak
broad light of day is hard release
dark ambient mover
destiny holds swirling gates ajar, squeaks
swallowed in the thousand flight
day walkers, collectors, miracle sound engine a storm
lacking necessary endings
mystery transforms night into illusion
familiar object outland delivers
sight objects unearthing sound
na
nabi
nun
white
what lies
lost as a child
I spoke
sighted in the scrim and flash
sway
A single line drawing, tacked up against the skin
this new injury without cause.
A face covers, presents itself always outwards.
How to suffer secretly without animating, without escape.
blushing for words, for eyes, for having been slightly cast
down and to the side, blushing, a toxic resin, seeping,
blushing for lack of cover, of outerwear, against heat, in frost, blushing
with wine, with firelight, shame, blushing against abrasiveness,
a breeze’s aggressive handling, from forced contact, a misstep
or slice of fruit
Some simple pleasures resolve into terrible consequences. A knife held against taut, gold skin. To sink teeth into, taste summer’s sweet southern face. Wander haphazardly without a trail, relying on vague leavings to guide the way. A waterfall that cast no shade. A bridge where you fight a titan in miniature in order to cross. Go abroad, nude. Being watchful is for those aware.
To love and then to strike, to lust and then to sate. There isn’t any end to what one smallness does. Show me a place and then another, building a small castle out of mud and straw. A place held for centuries, nearly flooded, but held. We were so nearly made of day. A poultice transmits what was necessary to contract.
I carry you throughout myself, most deadly messenger.
The words you scrawl rearrange themselves each night
re-sear inside the ear’s canals
This injury repeating, there is no sense in pain. No admonishment for a character burned into skin. I terrified and lost. In losing now I stain. The outcomes are consistent: to sing a sweet song or drowned. The boat skimmed along until the shore. An obvious design of the ripples, what slipped beneath the tongue.
in my tremor
perfect lost against a growing swell
shelf made of sand
the eye grieves its own wandering,
taking trespass slightly in
Oh swords beneath the weather caught up in trellises or rain
How is it to take shape in a swarm breathing heat
Carving relegated into losing the crisp lines between sand grains, glass
Whether of the ear, nose, a similarity in the sense of sight and touch. From softness only a memory may bleed. What was done with bidding cost so little and these words now are bare. Maybe to catch their seams against me, to take them up through a tear. There are distances and dystrophies. Transforming hyperbole into mute shale, keep watch with how the wind takes hold and crashes.
There is no end to seeping: its purpose is to hold at bay. Let out the aimless wander, a darkness from behind the veil. If I cut myself, unstopper, unstaunch, taste a dialect from inside the coursing will—who is to say completion is a category forced from an end. There are significant aftershocks hidden and replete in their scarlet robes. The force of the world can unite the contaminant, so I hope, sucking bee pollen against the teeth.
And when we had been scattered over the face of the earth
We could not speak to one another
Myung-Mi Kim
As white as a ghost, barely as simple
There are no responses
fluttering
There are no solutions bound in the body we discuss
the glass cut over your wrist
reminds you of something you wanted and never had
Am I my mother’s child and wholly hers
This face is not for you or them
We are never mistaken
I am frequently mistaken
There are no punishments for my face for having seen
I carry no splinters in my tongue
Confusion conquers survival
Yes, we are fed
Yes, we may read
The paper is biblically thin
I am asked to turn down the light
She hangs sweaters over the lamps
This is a beautiful country
Understand you cannot go back
The titles are signed over, are signed
New buildings go up and down
are rented and sold
Logic is starker than the responses
I do not respond when your hand burns
The page is blank before it burns
These are the few spaces I have allocated to you
I do not recognize the living room
In truth, by not speaking we are buried
In truth, we speak huddled and on the phone
What pieces fall together do not match
What relates does not fit together
There are no documents or photographs
The mouth is to feed, is to put things into
Things that fall out: teeth
seeds
crab shells
curses
Embarrassed by strangers the tongue is confusing
Things become boring
Glossed over with new olive oil or peaches
There is no recognition in this
My freckled spirit
Having no name but these two
1. breaking out
I wanted what they all thought
face bright morning blind
against a wall of antique glass
I knew that sound in seeing
song’s daughter, mending with the hands
we are of each other
though separated I cannot stand
2. the first name
emptiness of the unsaid vowel, space, holder, open mouth, float
I understand the quiet mouth the roundest of its shapes
I do not go by this given name
the soft heart of which
salty like a palm
3. between me and you
having forgotten what was mine
forgotten in the way of my never having
what is to say in the space not had
never gotten
which is to say
my two ways have forgotten me
4. traveling the distance
remarkable for my “vigor” my “height” my lack of cosmetics
what was fashionable is comic, I parade in the rainy seasons
burnt out with disuse, with layering having been found and returned
the city is a disaster in concrete, are you Chinese, must I speak—
this is my cousin, she is studying during her visit
5. the second name
(that I have loved you and failed is an extension of the past)
my father is a generous man and well versed
we make things with our hands and eat
my mother is a wise woman and shrewd
she dresses in violet and adorns her hair
romance or parody
heroine and failure, the right decision may mean desist
a thing of beauty
common and fleeting
what was given to one age nearly repeated so others may also taste
6. origins, or the photograph
the face is not mine
neither hers nor his
the baby is not me
eyes more wild and black
is it to marry a woman from the north
to find a man tall, landed
ambition or obedience
I only recognize the early bud of these faces
intent on upholding and yet
breaking all custom
learn and unlearn even in old age
accepting new marriages
clothing, food, societies,
work, children, languages and disease
what coincidences and necessities
can force those who struggle ashore
to build, cut free but pouring
7. missive
dear future pear,
space can be a float, a raft before the quake. you may discover that sound shivers before the story, before the waking eye inside your head. stay true to the wandering thought and lose yourself in the mad varieties of the world. the ear can be tuned, trained to follow the end to a full delivery. arrive in the greatest potential of each motion to find that what was discovered bids rectifying though lost. piecing together from the notes splayed in your head may transform the utter tune, losing both the pitch and timbre of the voice you carried home. silence may disfigure or set the lamps on fire. seeing can be a heard thing, just as tasting can be a name.
8. the final sound
forward and falling in half, burnt at both ends,
I am my native birthright and the holiest of texts.
the center can transfix the stillness of a storm.
missions failed, fought, finalized and won
stand to the side disfigured by the realization of a space
between the names.
that the answer can be an unspoken sound, delivered
by mute secrets dug out and quickly buried,
that to have no inscription in the book of generations
is a testament to the rightness of an empty word.
there are ages to discover
deliverance in continuous motion,
the depth charted in a sound, decaying.
that the instant is a present for the round mouth of expectation,
providing no proof but the names I wear,
a silk shift,
a shroud.
Sueyeun Juliette Lee grew up in McLean, Virginia, just three miles from the headquarters for the CIA. Recent work of hers has appeared in Columbia Poetry Review, 580 Split, Coconut, and Phoebe. She currently edits Corollary Press, which she launched in 2005.