Sister
Made you into dream
again. Pulled
what I could
from memory, conjured
the rest, shaping image
into bone. You were
able-bodied, tall
& lean. Twenty-
five & single,
two shades lighter:
the Korean more pro-
nounced in your eyes
& skin. We are visiting
Mom’s for Christmas,
speeding west
on I-70, Oklahoma
City a string of light –
like tinsel – lining
the highway.
If we talked, it
would have been
about blood.
City lights flicker
across our bodies
like a broken projector,
the film reel
emptied
years ago. The radio
fades into silence,
we’ve lost the signal.
You tap
a simple beat
on the window
while I turn
the knob.
I never heard your voice.
The Body's Language
Men smoke on Hagwon-ga, eyeing
the dark borders of my body.
Silence is its own language. Say nothing
and understand the body’s meaning.
Grandma gestures to granddaughter
a command to greet a stranger.
I catch on quick. Anyang – the word tastes
hot as it leaves my mouth. I lack grace
of tongue, but become expert at mime –
an open menu, shape of fruit, fingers sign
money, costs, lost places, here and there.
But I understand stares
and gestures, eyes and voices in low-
tones. I pretend I don’t want to know.
Grandma thrusts the girl, stiff as board,
into my arms. Her body becomes word.
Gary Jackson, born and raised in Topeka, Kansas, is the author of the poetry collection Missing You, Metropolis, which received the 2009 Cave Canem Poetry Prize. His poems have appeared in Callaloo, Tin House, Phoebe, The Laurel Review and elsewhere. He is the recipient of both a Cave Canem and Bread Loaf Fellowship. An MFA graduate from the University of New Mexico, Jackson currently teaches fulltime at Central New Mexico Community College in Albuquerque, New Mexico, and at the low-residency MFA program at Murray State University in Murray, Kentucky. He is a contributing poetry editor at Catch Up: A journal of comics and literature, and has been a fierce lover of comics for over twenty years.