Self-Portrait
Inkyoo Lee
An axe can never hack into the sea—
where do I carve this fact? Into the sea.
A defect in vision: flocks of gulls
cinch the sun, plumed all black. Into the sea
falls daylight. I swallow twenty-four pills:
my throat returns a cataract into the sea.
“Hope has no direction, only expanse”—
at dusk I dive, hope-racked, into the sea.
Grieve not. In the end, all of us go home:
God empties the glass back into the sea.
where do I carve this fact? Into the sea.
A defect in vision: flocks of gulls
cinch the sun, plumed all black. Into the sea
falls daylight. I swallow twenty-four pills:
my throat returns a cataract into the sea.
“Hope has no direction, only expanse”—
at dusk I dive, hope-racked, into the sea.
Grieve not. In the end, all of us go home:
God empties the glass back into the sea.
Inkyoo Lee is a Korean poet and an MFA candidate at New York University, where he is Assistant Translations Editor for Washington Square Review. His poems have appeared or are forthcoming in Wildness, Antiphony, Rejected Lit, Ghost City Review, and others. He has been supported by the Kenyon Review Writers Workshop. Find out more at https://inkyoolee.com/.
©2024 Volume Poetry
Join our mailing list:
Join our mailing list:
Follow us on instagram.
Submit your work to Volume:
submissions@volumepoetry.com
Submit your work to Volume:
submissions@volumepoetry.com