In every
bubble shop I double
All the buses
pop all the boys
Drown in the
pool all the fools
All the dogs
the roads lost walking
Too many dogs
I buried them too
Left it all in
the dust this is not
Over the
monkey I wore double like
If corsets
could talk
Corset see
corset do
There’s no
door to lock
The fairest of us all a
single
Syllable
bridge OH
She went mad
threw herself over it
Left it all in
the dust this is not just
Tossing basic
of the party walk
Slapping the
voodoo out of you walk
Blow up the
street in cathedral length
Just to cross
the room
Makes it
smaller
Need
directions
Sorry there’s
no river wide enough
Not enough
camel cash
Say a prayer
last call
Dead hand in
your wine glass
Mirror mirror
I will not
Shine on the
canals or pyramids
There’s no
need to level mountains
When you call
for me how strange
Is it not dust
to dust I’m far off
The little
desert church
Calling the
clock
Shut your eyes
Don’t look at
it
Poet’s note:
HyunA has a tattoo of the Hebrew word Emunah. A simple way to explain the word is to translate it as “faith;” its root aman means “firm” as in “she has a firm (secure) conviction.” It is also close to uman, the word for “artisan.” Emunah, however, is not based in reason; it is more innate. This poem was inspired by HyunA’s role in popular culture, particular in her songs and videos “Bubble Pop” and “Red.” As a poet and artist, I never bought the criticism lobbed at her, and wanted to celebrate the playful irreverence of her persona in these videos and endurance of her career, especially in the world of K-Pop.
Born to a Mexican
mother and Jewish father, Rosebud Ben-Oni is a CantoMundo Fellow and the author
of SOLECISM (Virtual Artists Collective, 2013). She was a Rackham Merit
Fellow at the University of Michigan where she earned her MFA in Poetry, and a
Horace Goldsmith Scholar at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. Her work is
forthcoming or appears in POETRY, The
American Poetry Review, Arts & Letters, Bayou, Puerto del Sol, among others. In Fall 2014, she
will be a visiting writer at the University of Texas at Brownsville’s Writers Live Series. Rosebud is an
Editorial Advisor for VIDA: Women in Literary Arts (vidaweb.org). Find out more
about her at 7TrainLove.org
0 comments: