2013-1-07-30
rim me around the lake wet index on pure water. blot
my digit’s sheen oil slick curling slow
concentric shocks like Bishop’s lover, alchemical in the chemical heat
of shampoo and love I misremember
still the dying explosions the narco-sheen of
medicinal morphine, pellucid beauty of oil slick on flesh ride the pure
stillness of time and light graying in plastic-hold: mechanized petrol,
beauty of apparatus breath after-the-fact still dying my love
in alcohol and medic gauze drowns black-blur time, configure
concentric lines, compass swung open demisphere to hemisphere she
walked in beauty Byron said, dumb intractable lyric privacy
swung open
aspic, orange, pig pool grease the suds
part, reveal
lake, orange concreture pure
shampoo, pig sweat, elastic dream cypher mangrove opera and saber
burn, the suds part reveal. phosphorescence,
speed, lover
give over my car. drive, bedded to lake, make out our bodies curdled
in emeralds: algae, vine, vernal lush past
bathed out of time
in gray concentric shocks I misremember right the suds transparency,
lake soiled in cleanliness and lye. clean lines I want to see drowned
with stars, living soil visible, vine visible vile.
1992-1-01-10
sell me your eyes, your discount
orange at the pitstop
candy from the pronged ends at the aisles: anodyne fruit
car bearer and fag at the end stop counter-child
counting your meticulous icons thumbnail to rind
coin-dye ride your pithy white gown:
incarnadine fruit, swell, petrol stink your lover high for once is swell,
you,
were you interested in living
this way, to the sweet intrusion of strategy:
this way piss stop this way
Jimin Seo was born in Seoul and immigrated to the United States at the age of eight. His books include OSSIA (2024), winner of the Changes Book Prize, and the forthcoming chapbook A – 1982. His most recent projects were Poems of Consumption with H.Sinno at the Barbican Centre in London and a site activation for salazarsequeromedina’s Outdoor Room pavilion at the 4th Seoul Biennale of Architecture and Urbanism.