Week 40: Rachel Kuanneng Lee

Portrait on Baegundae Peak,
Bukhansan, c. 2016,
Posted on Instagram

there is
at twenty-five
some expectation
of hope
wild
really, i am terror impersonated
holding down a scream
so high
the world
stops

i know
what i want
something to prove
my fear
like the clouds, hanging
threatening to spill over
a disaster

this photo of me
standing at the peak of
some ridge
in it, i am grinning
on the precipice
a picture of adrenaline
when you can climb
up mountains in a dress
the universe at your feet
watches

what you want
is a good story
what i’m worth
you cannot see
on the wrong side of the shutter
you only see me
bubbling into laughter

Rachel Kuanneng Lee has lived in Singapore and South Korea. Her work appears in or is forthcoming at Quarterly Literary Review Singapore, carte blanche, wildness, trampset, No Contact, Sky Island Journal, and elsewhere. She was a finalist for the Live Canon 2020 competition and is a Brooklyn Poets Fellow. She is also co-founder of a data science startup and hopes that someday, she might be able to make a coherent narrative out of her career choices, even if today is not quite that day. You can find her online at rachel-lee.me.