Youna Kwak

Improbable Ease in the Interior of Things

Improbable ease in the interior of things
while in the exterior gleams
taut as stretched muscle. In the interior
a coke-bottle
smoothness. A pair of robins
and no dispute. The world refracted
through a glass pin. Violence
as a storm that took us but inside oceans
unbroken, only stippled with
white. Like glimpsing your enemy
in an auditorium but
he does not turn his head. Unseen
you can be
tropical, sprung from
interior. Even cloud does
not penetrate
nor fog the vision nor
the swarm of bees deposit its
sticky aftermath,
unseen you velvet through
each vehicle, strumming the air
as if air were music. It is a kind of music,
not pastoral but
with shepherds that labor
and smell of dung. Unpossessed, there,
you are, can be
unaccounted for.
Is it a sanctuary
of doors opening and closing or are there
only portholes, round with ambivalence,
the distant ship appearing
as a slim white foot. Only your wish
to know the curve traced
on the inside of things.
Or a sudden movement
at night, in the garden, destroys your pitch. Elegantly
things resume their
positions. Counterfeit purses and ordered money
make their way
into your pockets. Now you are swarmed through
and
the things may shrill for your attention though you are
alert to the
interiors only, the scooped grave just underneath
the outline of the surface.
In another life you shall be a
foxhound. A thousand tiny pores flowering
on the dense oblongs of your nostrils. A thousand
different ways to smell.


Youna Kwak