Memories of an Upward Sinking
Many inquiries experienced me. Whipped by tails of their horses
or handiwork, always the struggles toward a clearance to succumb.
With the speed of being sought by seeking, I was aroma.
I was a vast space at the end of the run. There were moments
between my dissonant fingers, their sad white chords: a fiddle song
swinging its sphere around its pivot. Another was dropping
the loosened spools to sing pointless operettas—a ruffle of this,
or some other lute jazz. And always the laughing: alfalfa, alfalfa.
Searching forward, it was all downward squall and mad poinsettia.
And then the princess cut wearing her spring tiara condensed
a symmetry that mocked the fluid flower. But they were already
spinning their canes, flinging their coats around ghost-things
to try to count them. To believe in these fixated nothings
while reasons evaporated clinging to my lift, their lover of air.
There lived a valiant reason that cast its net far. It led to no whales
or castanet sounds, but caught a guttural later. At its end between teeth
the birdsong: fury, fury! why is the light? who is this unfamiliar?
Light had floored its slow unknowing and after it passed, there was
only a stone. So when the combs brought them self-knotting, I settled
into a dewdrop to die again, but wilt of wanting, cusp of new distance.
Why is silence so everywhere cold and mine? They think I am mysteries
that refuse to go anywhere and resemble a conduit to music.
About the Author
Soyoung Jung's work has been published or is forthcoming in The Journal. Spinning Jenny, and Web Conjunctions. She practices law in San Francisco.
