silk

                    for Vincent Chin

such as air, such as glass
 
            the many layers of the silk refract
                                                         the light/ this
 
is more than nuance/ this
is fact/ passing through the consciousness 
 
                                  obliquely/ what the eye sees
                                                  when it focuses on difference/ how
 
I seem sometimes the ghost voice of Korean/ the
child voice of the Japanese
 
             depending on the speed at which you size
                                                                       me up/ chase me down
 
the street/ swing the bat in front of the
MacDonald’s/ beat
 
                                the shit out of the bachelor party/ the subtle
                                                                 details lost in what you take
 
for granted: made in Japan/ what I take
for wear when I sometimes buy
 
            the cultivated shantung of the bride/ the
                                                          manufactured sorrow of these slippers

 May 2024

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Kathleen Hellen is the author of three poetry collections, including Meet Me at the Bottom, The Only Country Was the Color of My Skin, and Umberto’s Night, which won the poetry prize from Washington Writers’ Publishing House, and two chapbooks. Featured on Poetry Daily and Verse Daily, her work has appeared widely in such journals as Arts & Letters, The Carolina Quarterly, Colorado Review, jubilat, Massachusetts Review, New Letters, North American Review, Poetry International, Prairie Schooner, Salamander, The Sewanee Review, Subtropics, Witness, and World Literature Today, among others. She is the recipient of the James Still Award, the Thomas Merton prize for Poetry of the Sacred, and poetry prizes from the H.O.W. Journal and Washington Square Review.

Art: Dudleya Pulverulenta by Kat Cervantes