Yung Seoul Kim

SUDDEN PASTORAL: HUSKED

   After Akhmatova

I walked in a flattened field
wearing a white dress.
It was close to dusk--
long fences of wheat bent

against me as I passed by.
The sound of walking—crush of cotton
chafing next to dry field.
Delicious elongated dream that happened again

And again during that particular night.
His sanded hair and wild eyes unfurled,
smoldering facts near me--
tanned wheat framing smooth brown stone.

I heard the low husk
of his voice pressing thick and solid
as he lifted the muddied hem
before pressing it back into the soil.

Yung Seoul Kim is a former Michener Fellow at the MFA Creative Writing program in Poetry/Fiction/Screenwriting at the University of Texas, Austin. Recent poetry has been published in Borderlands, Washington Square, Lake Effect, The Briar Cliff Review, Sulphur River Literary Review, Cricket Online Review, Seattle Review, and Cranky. Her artistic honors include two Pushcart Prize XXXI nominations in poetry and in short fiction and the Van Lier Prize in Poetry (2001-02). These days, Kim is at work on final, seemingly never-ending, revisions for a book-length collection of poetry called Internal Wild.