Siege Document

Myung Mi Kim

a graduated effort

r     s

bandage pulled back is blood gone mud

p    eu              hand hewn

freedom from commerce was a cry

filterdoubt    .    locution    .    string and pelter    .

attached to pillars and saltbeds

wracked as imperfect lot

*

Sleep took the eye muscle and severed it

In the vernacular      ate      stirred      swept

At the periphery          garbage pigs

: sandscroll :

After a long last

I learn my story

My mother had restaurant

she made noodle soup

It was famous soup

She suffer so much

For so much her life

It burn skin to bone

Scar tissue on top of nerve ending

Ugly power of military

I scream too hot too hot

Naked where clothes were a second before

*

signs and symptoms

crossing veins of lettuce and a miner’s light

whose bones therefore appear short or thin relative to dental age

anemia recorded as porosity of the eye orbits

some by excess, some by defect

others by affliction

others by time for animals to be gathered together, time when water is drawn

(to) provide for days when hunting is poor or many are sick

*

The rest buried him by striking him with fir trees

When the armament was in

Having consumed the eight sparrows in the nest

The wounded were washed in hot waters

Now the twentieth year since she quitted her native land

Exposure and desertion

: Many of the residents who have died of heat exhaustion were

elderly men and women reluctant to use air

conditioning because they worried about expensive utility bills

Houseless heads and unfed sides

*

skilter head     .     lifts up and tells simple mother stories

everyday to spout

everyday to alight

everyday to bring one end to the other, close

a pick a pack a frightening fund

*

that.     wants a biscuit

I am assured that the global buying frenzy

I am assured that there is a global buying frenzy

drain in a prophylactic sense

in plain sight    cusp of flesh and action

that said: the cost

that said: brittle off the bone and perjure

Constant Reverential Face

Please allow that

Place of feet and water

Please allow that

The oil and seeds

What is the call to call out

*

laughter visited us early and left

moving around a sequence of debts

there would be the occasion of reaching for a foreign object in the eye

Speaker:          She got shot.   She did.           I saw her.

limbs of pines   rope around the waist

neither slaves nor freemen, but who have become part of the soil

upon which they work

like so many cows and the trees

the schools had been burned down

the teachers had been starved to death

the road had fallen into decay

the bridges were gone

will be eaten

at a ration of quarters

will be eaten

at a ration of fifths

*

The point at which something is a ruin

Perforating scrawl

55 floods, 25 windstorms, 57 droughts, 37 plagues of locusts

The work required kneeling

: The amounts they speak of are in reality quite small and because

of the missing one hundred dollars

everything they have could be put up for farm auction

Rudimentary sinew connecting library, school and public land

In the eaves                 under systems of decimation

*

chorus

water supply silted

children sold for token payment, for the promise that they would be fed

seasonal hunger

human cash crop

if to bend back at stems