Jihyuk Han
Three Poems
The Peach Tree
Pandemic—my favorite season
The holidays pass and I am
A young woman again. Only one
Trick-or-treater in 34 years
On Gnarled Hollow
Road. And it was my angry
Neighbor Kal, dressed as
The Angel of
Death. Better to
Think of my first
Love, L and write him
A poem or letter
In the shape of a
Peach, only who knows
How the Old Stump
Would respond?
L, who climbed
The roof of his mail
Truck, for the
Highest peaches—he
Fell 3 months
Ago. But I can still
See him on his tippy-toes.
Reaching up…
Only, no more peaches
And his bag stained with
Blood and dried leaves.
Crushed By This Beauty
6 Feet to the left, the grunts and screams of the Russian tennis player
crack the flat screen. I absorb the insatiable gaze
of the masked passengers waiting
to board the train. Everything moans and churns
Even the creepy bearded guy with his thumb twitch.
Happy but waiting. One could
Murder us all: the high school boy
Texting on his cell phone. Furrowed and grimacing
A small girl punching the air while her mother
Reads the news. All the headlines are uncomfortable, naïve or
Misdirected. Nothing pacifies the girl named Judie
The announcer says he doesn’t love us
Not this moment
Or the next. I was wrong to leave you.
I won’t allow myself the pleasure.
The train of Not Thinking of You never arrives
I am never leaving this station.
Neighbors
The masked, pantless father is standing on the front walk
The leaves of the Japanese maple—flaming
And the days like drugged up
Passengers nodding off to sleep
While the children are molested by bees
What good is apology?
When it’s gone too far
And the listener’s ears are filled
Not with remorse
No faith in the endless thrown shade. The trees look as if women are hanging
Themselves between the branches. You could be strangled here
You are strangled
Still early summer. Yet to give up
It’s obscene moons, its rope burns and slow willful
Dismantling.
—Submitted on 10/28/2020 to the erstwhile What Rough Beast series.
Jihyuk Han is a writer who lives in the Hudson Valley.
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