We Are Vessels, Emily Loftis, November 2015
We Are Vessels
We are hungover
from Soju, the foreigner bars in
Sokcho, lank bodies on the bus
to Daecheong Peak, when you pick at
nicotine stains under my fingernails
say hey d’you ever think about what the
atoms we’re made of once made up
before we were here? And I’m thinking of your
North Carolina dirty in my cuticles, the woman
nodding waygookein across the aisle
the Korean word for foreigner precise as the oral pucker
of her molar-less mouth. Ask me again,
I’ll measure out molecules from her baby teeth
in the insect twitching there green against glass.
This is the newness of a window. These, our bodies,
asleep every night on different floors without bedsheets,
carrying the thin breath of bored locals and fumbling
tourists as we travel. Anyoung-haseyo.
Anyoung-haseyo. We
bow low like the pumpkin flowers
heavy-headed on their vines but parting their legs,
rubbing roots under cover of mountain soil
it’s the stir of sweat-damp thighs in this East Sea heat,
the frothy tinge of tidal sockets at the cusp of root and riot.
Ask once more, you’re carrying me in your
lungs even as you read this, understand me. You are my
crippled yellow of displacement, the dust settling
on Hangeul-scribed bus seats you cannot read.
And I’m licking all the dry edges, sealing every envelope
with salt-chapped lips,
thick spit like steam that was here
in the beginning.
Emily Loftus
Red Roomer
This piece was inspired by what I experienced while living in my first home abroad. I was living in the Northern Province of Gangwon-Do, South Korea, in a small village near the sea. Though South Korea is among one of the world’s most homogeneous cultures, living in such a rural area exaggerated the divide between locals and foreigners even more. I was one of the two foreigners in my area of fishermen and farmers, quite isolated from the nearest city, and far from the closest bus station, and supermarket.
Yet, even while I was often treated as being markedly different, and at times felt markedly different, I also experienced great moments of community and inclusiveness with the families in my village, passing travelers, and other expats. This dichotomy between being a part of while also apart from became central to my life there; this poem attempts to capture those moments of flux and balance.
Emily Loftis is from the Midwest in the US, now based in Taipei working as an English Writer/Editor.
