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Give me now
what scalds and reeks.
Give me chilis and garlic raw.
Give me dropwort
and chrysanthemum greens.
Buckwheat and tea. The bite
of a well ripened kimchi.
Let me wrap my meat
in what others mistake
for spoil. Let me unearth months
-old jars of ponytail radish,
turned just so, and bless
rice with its sunny juices.
Give me that funk and meju pungency.
Give me fried corvina that stares
vacuous as I eat, its mouth lolling
and toothen. The egg-sac nestled inside,
give me that too. Pouch of possibility,
multitude and sweet. So crisp the
oil-puff ed dorsal fi ns, the tail fi ns.
How good the fl esh off the cheeks.
The grease off blistered scales.
Give me now what disgusts.
Grilled tongue and entrails fat
with what you call digestive gunk
and I call gold. Fiery chicken
feet with the nails neatly trimmed.
Minutia of bone. Spit and keep eating.
Give me stink. Give me pig skin
dipped in powdered grain. Give me krill
and pickled octopus: blood-hued,
suckers up and gaping. Food
that makes you honor what was killed
in your name. Vein of the cod roe.
Blistered hair of the intact hock.
Evidence of bodies carved from.
What makes you clasp your palms
to your nose is the bell that calls in
my hunger. I don’t care anymore
what you think. Give me sesame oil
and fat. Give me bloodied and raw.
The white broth of famine food.
Food made to last. To transform
with the seasons. To survive
other nations. Give me all
I avoided so long for your sake.
Give me my heritage back.
Give me refuse and I’ll make it
worthy. Let me suck meat off the shell
of every animal you won’t eat.
From Hunger Mountain Issue 23: Silence & Power, which you can purchase here.
Art by Sondra Groff, curated by Dana Lyons.
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[av_one_half]Jihyun Yun is a Korean-American poet from California. A Fulbright Research Fellow, she received her MFA from New York University in 2016. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in Bat City Review, Adroit Journal, Poetry Northwest, and elsewhere. A winner of the Prairie Schooner Book Prize, her full-length collection SOME ARE ALWAYS HUNGRY will be published by The University of Nebraska Press in September 2020.[/av_one_half]
[av_hr class=’custom’ height=’50’ shadow=’no-shadow’ position=’center’ custom_border=’av-border-fat’ custom_width=’100%’ custom_border_color=’#8f2f66′ custom_margin_top=’30px’ custom_margin_bottom=’30px’ icon_select=’no’ custom_icon_color=” icon=’ue808′ font=’entypo-fontello’ admin_preview_bg=”]Running Sneakers | New Balance 247 “Castlerock” Buy Now , SneakerNews.com