Bugs and Other Poems

By Sigrid Kim

Bugs

Rolling green hills
looking like pillows,

On a Sunday morning,
keep looking like something
you’d see on a postcard only for so long.

You’re not from the North-East
if you’ve never gone on a road trip
up the 87.

She tapped the worn down
sink as her kid
sat outside on the bench. 

It’s 9:00 AM,
her head soon presses
against the forest green plaid pillow. 

All she sees 
is empty blue sky.

All she thinks about
is the rusty sink.

Her eyes eventually close.

When she’s asleep,
she is at most peace. 

Self Portrait as Ocean

Mountains are waiting for me.
The world is behind me. 

I live between the shore and mountains. 
They often ignore my presence, because they don’t care.
I am not as white and clean as the shore, even though I am the person
Who stares at her to be cleaned after the sunset.
I am not as deeep as the mountains and unfortunately,
I don’t own a high point, but I wonder how much it would cost to trim one. 

Dad called me Ocean,
and he brought all the water and poured
Them into my body. He didn’t care, 
If they are enough for a ocean, and he aimed
To create me some joy. 

But in this world that desires for contrast,
Water is not enough. Even Ocean, is not enough.
They slip through people’s feet, people’s legs,
People’s thighs, and even people’s necks. 
All they leave is a wet mark. A stain. 

I always want to be something more than
Ocean, to be more detailed and decorated, than
A hand of water. I know, one day, if I become a mountain,
I can see those clouds that now float above me, and
I can see the world behind the mountains.

But I am not able to do it.
Ocean is just Ocean. The more I wish,
The quicker things evaporate. The clouds are moving
Forward now. The trash on the shore is being picked up
Now. Only me. Stare at my body watch how it shrinks and then swells.

Dad is a liar.
He gave me the water and named me Ocean.
He hoped the smoothness could bring me all the joy and peace,
But they already abandoned me. And the water has
All my tears. 

Indentured Workers

Cartographers inscribed “here be dragons” on the empty
spaces of maps. But when I skim my calloused finger across those
echoing sea of nothingness, I hear not the roar of the dragon, but
the rumble of the mersey slicing through the waters on which our worlds are perched.

What were you considering to be, if not bonded barge boats, loaded
with sugarcane seeds, anchored to the shores of capitalism? 

Tell me, what did you think of the garden? A forgotten mango, a pale musk-orange
sun, an amoeba writhing in a pool of sweat–
Tell me, what did death sound like? The fleeting rush of a life-given river,
the cool caress of a hand from another world–
Tell me, do you think of home now? Dams splintering rivers, new borders
blooming within our map– I want to hear you.

We will never be able to make a 100% accurate
world map, says openculture.com. How can we say, I, if the seas are not
blue but red with the blood of our people, if every known spot is unknown,
if every compass points in the direction of the terra incognita, 
if the world is not static-map like, but shifting, breaking, and becoming–

We know nothing. 

But I know that I imagine. I imagine you as a summer mist.
Cloud vapor. Unanchored and unbonded. Rain on the map
etched onto our skins. Dew filling our wounds. 
The rivers running through our veins. 

Sigrid Kim is a student at McLean High School in Virginia, where she actively engages in writing, drawing, and caring for her two beloved dogs, Oliver and Cooper. In preparation for her future academic endeavors, she is currently assembling her portfolio and has recently secured admission to Juniper’s Young Writers Camp and Sewanee.