Kisaeng
“I want to understand the joy I felt
as I was letting him go.”
—Hwang Jini
As I listened to the fabric of his jacket
assume the casual shape of leave-taking.
I learned how to unhinge form from breath
unbind & unknot the numinous black,
so that again I was a woman & an artist
whose ravens fell onto the ondol floor
like cords, not a suicide’s hair floating
in a village well & souring the water.
Callus on my finger, cushion for the kayabam,
we shall pluck the string to forget triumphs
before royalty taxing us for a celadon barge,
shall sweep princes’ names into a crevice
where we store besotted & sudden proposals
to suck a jujube’s succulent orb,
as if we required their directions to resist
the stone in which a waiting life will crack
a rooting. Tendril of song, evening calm,
guide my sense of use across the instrument
transforming my desire for vengeance
into forest hearth smoke from which I fled
as a pretty child, selected by the king’s men.
Help me never to forget the elation I felt
when my first patron swore by the river’s force
his love for me, & I understood its swelling
to rush & breach could teach me to survive it
by emptying myself to play a perfect note.
Copyright Credit: Jennifer Kwon Dobbs, "Kisaeng" from Paper Pavilion. Copyright © 2007 by Jennifer Kwon Dobbs. Reprinted by permission of White Pine Press, www.whitepine.org.
Source: Paper Pavilion (White Pine Press, 2007)