Jessica Kim

In Which I Want Nothing

                 I want the hands of a street-vendor
caught in the middle of a night market. That
                 way, I will be able to trade ivory vases
for a lifeline. I want to sell the history of this
                 nation to the thieves outside the out-
skirts, behind the neon billboards, broken.
                 I want to be able to steal without
looking back, without remorse or a mother
                 to warn me to be a saintly daughter.
I want to rid myself of a face, dried out and
                 yellowed like a piece of parchment
paper. To outline the borders of a country
                 is to fold my forsaken name into
starved skies. I want to unlearn the way
                 a mouth extends into a crescent,
then narrows into a river all too quickly.
                 I want to forget the currents that
run through my hands like scars passed
                down from my ancestors, a leftover
currency for tragedy. I want to breathe them
                to life. I want to save my country. I want
godhood. I want to stitch creation myths into
                the crevices of my hands and sell them
at a nightmarket. I want to be left with nothing,
                not even my hands, not even this poem.

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Jessica Kim is a disabled poet from California. A two-time 2021 Pushcart nominee, her work has appeared or is forthcoming in Wildness Journal, Diode, F(r)iction, Grain Magazine, Longleaf Review, Glass: A Journal of Poetry, and more. She is the founding editor of The Lumiere Review. Find her on twitter at @jessiicable.