The Town and Other Poems

By Yoon Park

The Town

This where children broke their legs running from their brothers
This is where they rolled down the mountain grass hills and said
someday they’ll make great machines that fly into the forever and blue sky
This where young boys found their hearts and broke them there
drunk on hand-rolled cigarettes and cheap spirits
This where they got in their mustangs and driving at 70 down
those old country lanes singing the dog days are over

This where they got weekend jobs and drank straight
into the hearts of those who left to sell clothes and whose brother overdosed
This is where they threw up into muddy ditches and holes laughing
about their past lives and their second wives
into the forever black night

This where their hearts blasted Radiohead through
the phones of those who were called
by the names of old men who had two kids but lives alone
singing the dog days are over, the dog days are done

Spring Changed When You Said

remember that summer 
When it was the day after the clouds of spun sugar and sticky
Webs that stuck to the corners of your
Lips
and while you read how the cow jumped
over the moon and how the dish ran away with the
Spoon your chin fell
Asleep on the picked scabs that tickled the
Heels of your hand, scratched them with your teeth. watched them
Bleed blue into the single puzzle piece that you held between my fingers with an image of
Sky with spun sugar for clouds, as white as your new set of front
teeth? Remember that summer 

When you lifted the soaked little puzzle piece, cardboard
Soaked and curling at the chewed very edge and asked momma, when
did the sky fall into my
Hand—
Puzzles did seem more simple to now and then
Spring changed when you said.

Sunset Left Stains on Your Sheets

So then you tried rubbing them
Licking fingers and wiping them off
Soaking the cloth ‘til they bled
Red
Nails scraped and gathered tangerine felt
On your chin stained cherry Jell-O
In the crooks of your fingers
flower petals that you stepped on
And the white brilliance of teeth

And yet the stubborn stain stayed
Sunset left stains on your sheets.

Yoon Park is a dynamic high school student enrolled at Seoul Academy in Seoul, South Korea. She channels her creative energy into writing and visual art and finds joy in expressing herself through these mediums. Additionally, she has a passion for music and spends her spare time playing the piano. Her dedication to her craft has earned her recognition and admission into the prestigious Sewanee Young Writers Conference.