From the Styx memory foam
a girl stems, fumbling to get
why in the coil of what. Every
what twisting for its scaled tail.
From Thetis’s wedding to gravity’s
threshold, the girl travels, the world
unhinged like a door drowning
in its frame. Snakes skinned alive too
learn their bodies to be cartographic
loops. Apple, spiral slow, your nudity
an unmapped globe. Attached to its axis
is human life & its gatekeeper
with a slingshot targeting a fruit
the size of a four-month pregnancy.
Every craving of hers a sin for she dared
to reach beyond the eaves of his
comfort. Every era fenced-in until she
breaks in. Some nights tilt like stairs
to allow her down & across. What does
the orchard rattle for? What in god’s
name—windows stripped of life
house habits losing their names.
Suphil Lee Park (수필리박 / 秀筆李朴) is a writer and translator from South Korea. She is the author of two poetry collections, All That’s in Bloom Is in Flames (forthcoming from Carnegie Mellon University Press, 2027), and Present Tense Complex (Conduit Books & Ephemera, 2021); and one poetry chapbook, Still Life (Factory Hollow Press, 2023). She also translated An Unraveling of One, an anthology of pre-20th-century Korean women’s poetry (forthcoming from TRP, 2027). Her work has appeared in The Kenyon Review, The New Republic, Poetry, and elsewhere.
