04-07-2025
Tiana Nobile 문영신
MOON YEONG SHIN
Written on the white slip at the bottom
of a polaroid, cut off by the frame:
a name. Many years passed before I learned
surnames come first in Korea. I rode
my bicycle in circles around this reversal.
For years, my skin leaped from shadow to shadow.
I drank the darkness, or the darkness drank me,
but what’s the difference when your veins are full
of haunting? One day I will walk
the narrow streets of many cities full of ice
freshly frozen. I will hike through forests
of wind storms newly risen. I will learn
and forget the names of many trees,
of tea leaves plucked too early in the season.
I will orbit the earth like a moon
searching for its shadow. Where does a moon
find its planet? Or is it the other way
around? To be a recently hatched egg-moon,
curved shell pinned to the sky. I’ve spent my whole
life in orbit of other people’s light, celestial satellite
in ceaseless wane. How much can you learn
from a stranger’s surname? A young animal
crawls its way out of the womb, stretches its legs
and feels cold for the very first time.
WHERE ARE YOU REALLY FROM
Intercourse, Pennsylvania. Fertile, Iowa. Uncertain, Texas. Hazard, Nebraska. Accident, Maryland. Why, Arizona. Hell, Michigan. Disappointment, Kentucky. Embarrass, Minnesota. Truth Or Consequences, New Mexico. Nameless, Tennessee. No Name, Colorado. Nada, Texas. Nothing, Arizona.
REVISIONIST HISTORY
The weather in Seoul in October is bright and balmy.
All the hospital beds are full, and women with thick arms
and bent knees, feet in the stirrups, scream in an echoing
symphony. A woman with small ankles can’t see
beyond her bloated stomach. She keeps her eyes shut
as forceps dig, doctors’ hands twisting between her legs
like a corkscrew pulling out the plug.
It’s been a busy morning, and between heaving breaths
she wonders how much longer? First the head,
then the shriveled body, bright as a small sun.
For the first time in her life she sighs and means it.
That’s how it happens in my fantasy, the movie I watch
on repeat, re-imagined myth of my birth. No. I emerged
from seafoam flapping my tailfins in the Pacific froth.
I washed ashore encased in a mermaid purse, crawled on all fours,
and learned the power of breath. No. I was stardust,
an accumulation of space matter falling to earth in tiny pieces.
I’m still gathering my limbs. They’re scattered all over the planet.
None of that is true. I was born in the airport, propelled
through the gaping mouth of sliding glass doors.
My father’s second cousin ferried me down the stairs,
my mouth bubbling with Korean consonants, eyes still wary
of sight. In the video recording of my arrival, the airport light
burns everything so yellow it’s purple. My grandfather’s cheeks
behind his glasses glow like round speckled eggs. I’ve watched
the video so many times it’s etched like a scar. I can feel
my mother’s yellow tears fall purple on my cheek. My father
tucks his upper lip inside his tongue. Years later, I will learn
why he does this: searching for words when the mouth is lacking,
soft tears cradled in the pockets of his open eyes. What’s
the difference between memory told and memory burned?
I was born in the womb of a stranger, my face a reflection
of somebody else’s shadow. If I told you that I missed you,
would you believe me? Would I?
-from Cleave (Hub City Press, 2021), celebrated with the author's permission and selected by PoemoftheWeek.com Spring 2025 Guest Editor, Lee Herrick
Tiana Nobile 문영신 is the author of the full-length poetry collection, Cleave (Hub City Press, 2021) and chapbook, The Spirit of the Staircase (Antenna, 2017), a collaboration with artist Brigid Conroy. She is a Korean American adoptee, artist, educator, member of the The Starlings Collective, recipient of a Rona Jaffe Foundation Writer's Award, and two-time finalist of the National Poetry Series. Her writing has appeared in Poetry Northwest, The New Republic, Lit Hub, and Southern Cultures, among others. She lives with her family in New Orleans, Louisiana.
