Time Travel

1584. Gwangju.
I throw dirt. Finger the sand. Crane my neck to read the symbols.
Geomancy laps meaning into every break of the ground. The earth
cries at night, eyes wet with dew in the morning, bloated
with water, minerals. Like her, I hide myself from the shaman men.

1952. Seoul.
My grandmother, swollen with my mother, walks unpaved roads
to a small hut where she’s met by two American evangelicals.
She has never seen a book bound by leather. What’s inside
must merit the skin of an animal. She receives the gift of tongues
and dances home, kicking up the dirt around her.

2006. Queens.
In a house church, I partake in the eucharist. The body, swapped
out for Japanese milk bread. We receive the blood in plastic
cups: prepackaged, unrecyclable. Millions of miniature chalices
predestined to return to earth, the land-fills.

2007. Pinelawn Cemetery, Long Island.
Every other Korean grave is distended with drink. A family pours
Maxim instant coffee, soju, Sprite on their ancestors. The dead
line up for Jesa rations, the way grandmother does for Ensure.
Underground, my grandfather quivers with thirst.
There being no libation for idols.

2022. Oakland.
In a popular Korean drama, a family sets a table of food
at a burial site. I stick my spoon upright in a bowl
of rice, offering grace to the spirits. Somewhere in Daejeon,
my grandfather’s hometown, a tomb on a hillside turns
over, embracing herself.

Sara Son is a writer from Queens. Her writing has appeared in Smokelong Quarterly, Cream City Review, Poetry South, No Contact, and elsewhere. She holds a BA from the Writing Seminars at Johns Hopkins. She tweets, sometimes, @saramjson.