POETRY

Finalist for the 2022 Auburn Witness Poetry Prize Honoring Jake Adam York

In Atlanta

By Cindy Juyoung Ok     VOLUME 55 No. 3 & 4

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I danced with the niece of a now ex
some springs back, a trip on which
their matriarch called me family.

That winter, the city was a shock
of snow and she wrote asking for tips
on uncovering her paled car. She had

told us already of the kind of white hoods
that march, how she had watched
outside church at seven in black pigtails.

Last week I heard shooting and massage;
in the instant of hearing knew, then said,
all that had not yet been reported. From

form to form I always was a good tester:
fill in the blank, circle the best--
When the checkboxed of our kind

is mowed, there is not a fear of new
attention but of what is revealed as abiding,
realities confirmed about my beautiful

and disposable body, effortlessly endable,
after all a symbol, even in hiding,
and my title a metonym for wartime

sex, compulsive lure and, cheek to chink,
our famous flatness: breasts, feet, eyes,
consciousness. Every mother knows

that any child’s long life is a sustained
surrender—the math of one man’s really
bad day, twelve million hearts buried.



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TO READ MORE POETRY, PICK UP A COPY OF VOL 55 No. 3&4



CINDY JUYOUNG OK teaches creative writing, is a poetry editor, and writes poetry reviews.


VOLUME 55 No. 3 & 4