EMILY JUNGMIN YOON
Emily Jungmin Yoon is the author of Find Me as the Creature I Am (Alfred A. Knopf, 2024). She has also published A Cruelty Special to Our Species (Ecco, 2018), a finalist for the 2020 Kate Tufts Discovery Award, and a chapbook, Ordinary Misfortunes (Tupelo Press, 2017).
There is nowhere in this world
that I want to live. I look at your face
like it’s goodbye. There is nowhere to go.
I shut my window because what else
can I do.
As poets, we are not only trying to make sense of a question that interests or haunts us, but also trying to spin beauty out of it; “beauty” meaning a force that makes us unable to look away, not necessarily pleasantness.
October 28, 2024