Going Home

by Joan Kwon Glass

In the kitchen, my father
slices a tomato. He sees me
& smiles. I pull up a chair
next to him. At age six,
there is only one narrative.
I’ve been gone so long.
My father tells me
to chop the broccoli
but there is no broccoli.
Instead of a knife,
he hands me a ring of keys.
None of the keys unlock
the front door but I keep
turning the knob. I try
until I forget which side
of the door I’m on.
In the backyard, my mother
sits on a beach towel, grinning
strangely & eating pages
from her Bible.
She accuses me of eating
the broccoli. I shake
my keys at her.
My baby sister is three.
She makes wings
out of paper bags & perches
on the kitchen counter.
She stays like that forever. Alive.
Someone is wailing nearby.
At first, I think it’s coming from
the neighbor’s house but
then I realize my mouth is open
& it’s my voice.
Can anyone hear me?
I’ve been gone so long.
Inside the house,
wallpaper roses drop their petals
like silent, pretty bombs.

Joan Kwon Glass is a Korean diasporic poet, author of the books Daughter of Three Gone Kingdoms (winner of the 2024 Perugia Press Poetry Prize) and Night Swim (winner of the 2022 Diode Book Prize). Joan’s poems have been featured or are forthcoming in Poetry, Th e Slowdown, Poetry Daily, Terrain, Ninth Letter, Rattle, AAWW (The Margins), Poetry Northwest, Tahoma Literary Review, Prairie Schooner, Salamander, and elsewhere. She lives and teaches near New Haven, Connecticut.