Jimin Seo moved to the US when he was 8. He lives between Manhattan and Cochecton, NY with his partner Gabriel. He earned his MFA from Columbia University and teaches at Baruch College. His manuscript "Furniture Music" was a finalist for the Nighboat Book Prize in 2022. His poems can be found or are forthcoming in Action Fokus, The Canary, LitHub, Pleiades, and The Bronx Museum.

TWO POEMS by Jimin Seo

from Crown for Peasant Heads

X. 

그
래

니
가

없
는

건

당
연
하
지

You are not there as a matter of course.
You carry the box you dust in. You kick 
the dog wayside, no telling what’s worse:
the damage you carry or damage picked
clean from the teeth and spat out. What 
is hurt when your own animal yelps
and retreats to a corner of the room? What
bares better its knives and cleans a bone 
than your own cruel fangs. You animal.
You master of damage. You bad dog. 

Your light comes through this minimal
heaven to rattle the dustbin you’re dogged
All your weight slung into this white hole.
Where have you been this whole time? Where?



 

 

땅 파고 지랄 떠는 그 새끼


My language is a worry
the world can’t convince
me I’m right.

I’m a man who hugs
head-cocked 
into an abacus. I kiss

the dirt with my knees,
count the last bar
of my wife’s song.  

I lose my wife 
to a bet. Hang
a sign she can’t see

on her wrist. Tie 
up her hair 
in a pony 

knot, yoke her 
to a marketplace,
give up my riches.

My wife gives 
children I wanted 
and dies.

Pay off my debt,
debtor. Move her to a vault
where no fault

is this honest: endless
green beauty
with lightning streaks,

an odor of doubt
brocaded on my coat.
A bastard digs his own pothole.

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