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Poems but if I knew the answer for where on this tiny orb we are meant to find constancy of grace neverending, I’d go off and sing, self-satisfied. perimeter blues squint-wishing a mist to rise from the ether of beach resorts deadened sand returning its infinite collar bark lying still for a hundred years children led back to the bay where once it spit away ownership, when most knew the names for a shore’s domed soul in dialect my god you’re right the sea, all land adjacent, godspirit cordoned from me sit here while toes feel an ocean goddess and she, nyi roro kidul, quietly ascertains that security will be coming for us shortly 31 The Poetry Review
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Poems SUJI KWOCK KIM Notes from Utopia, Inc. for my grandfather 1 Who minds the minders? To watch them watch you watch them watch each other watching you, as you walk along the Taedong River, down Revolution Avenue to the Victorious Fatherland Liberation War Museum, past the Monument to the Martyrs of the People’s Party, past the guard-towers and interrogation rooms, labyrinths of cinderblock and barbed-wire and steel, each face shadowed by that looked-at look, as rush-hour crowds descend escalators underground to “the deepest subway on earth,” aka “the largest nuclear bomb-shelter on earth,” blast-doors sealed against anthrax or radiation, the exit that is not an exit. Thunder of wheels on tracks. A train’s iron scrape and drag. Name the stations: Comrade, Red Star, Golden Fields, Paradise. Giant photos of the Great Leader hang on every wall, staring at you like a shorter, fatter Mao – the dictator’s dead grandfather still “Eternal President,” the only corpse on the planet holding executive office. As if all the world were underworld. Why did you come here, among the marching soldiers, singing factory-workers, dancing schoolchildren, what are you trying to find? We’re all brothers and sisters, we have nothing to fear: our father is here. You cannot not see the other life you might have lived, the not-I in the I, the never in the now. 32 The Poetry Review

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Poems but if I knew the answer for where on this tiny orb we are meant to find constancy of grace neverending, I’d go off and sing, self-satisfied. perimeter blues squint-wishing a mist to rise from the ether of beach resorts deadened sand returning its infinite collar bark lying still for a hundred years children led back to the bay where once it spit away ownership, when most knew the names for a shore’s domed soul in dialect my god you’re right the sea, all land adjacent, godspirit cordoned from me sit here while toes feel an ocean goddess and she, nyi roro kidul, quietly ascertains that security will be coming for us shortly

31 The Poetry Review

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