Cleaning house
after Don Paterson
by Ashley Sojin Kim
You took some time to sift through yearsold
photos of yourself
and glossy ones you’d mailed to her
of your four smiling kids
You smiled back before you caught
yourself and gradually
reverted to your somber mask
of heavy, down-turned lips
Your wife came with you, helping you
collect things worth their keep—
the photographs, a yellowed hymnal,
prayers your mother wrote
on flyleaf when her memory
began to fade, the inked
petitions listing progeny’s names—
and tossing all the rest
Swan Song
The laurel, born of Daphne’s plea, remains
a wreathed accolade with glossy leaves
arrayed around, the open-voweled crowns
like hollow reeds, Pan’s makeshift pipes that sigh
with zephyrs, yet another story marked
by the pursuit of gods and shallow grief
enshrined in precious symbols serving those
who fashioned them, but honest love is not
lost ardor—think on sorrow held in curls
of tender hyacinth, Apollo’s blue,
revered as a lover weeping promises
in springtime blooms as mute swans draw the halffull
chariot to sacred lands and sing
sweet melodies of faithfulness to death.
About the Poet: Ashley Sojin Kim is an MFA candidate in poetry at the University of Florida. She received her BA in Writing Seminars from The Johns Hopkins University and is originally from Los Angeles. Her work appears or is forthcoming in Faultline Journal, RHINO Poetry, and Spoon River Poetry Review.