Floridad
I gave grist to animals while your sermons
Piled high against the tide. When struggle
Stirred your anger, I hung letters from the world’s ceiling.
Hung myself by my sleeves to rickety branches of oaks.
As if this were levitation enough to make of heaven
A friend. Though no matter what bargains I make,
I’m in flesh flush with blue, buckets of paint
Spilling across the sand. I went to you for definition.
Crawled across sargassum, sand stained with my
Colors. I’d find you a masked man, baptismal drive
Keening round you. Your fishing line cutting
The sky and sea. The oceans bubbled with Tedfish,
Pompano, Tarpon, Flounder. But on your line
Only flotsam cargoed from the deep.
Joohyun Kim is a queer South Korean American poet living in Philadelphia. She is currently in the Temple MFA program.