Espresso Proust
by Lei Kim
CW: mention of death, cremation
When the heat in the cremation oven
shut your body, you left
the least of you;
my dear, black as Espresso Proust,
black is you.
Looking at the interjection,
a stray cat’s ears
twitched for the headlights
groping every moment, non-stop;
moment, deep as Espresso Proust,
black is the moment yet to reach.
Each time it came back
as a different raindrop,
a different drought,
a different night.
Unlock the door, now unbutton your shirt;
lost time, bittersour as Espresso Proust,
black is the golden froth of time.
Once, I saw a drop of ocean,
one side of its surface tilted
by a flock of loons, the spiral wings of a typhoon
reach out to the continent;
a drop, dark as Espresso Proust,
black is every drop.
Lei Kim is a poet and translator living in Korea. Her work has been published in Visual Verse. She received the Modern Korean Literature Translation Award and translated Lee Jangwook’s poetry collection, Request Line at Noon (Codhill Press, 2016)