Close Sonnet #8 by Sean Cho A.
Associate poetry editor Hannah Cajandig-Taylor on today’s bonus poem: In this poignant piece, Sean Cho A. unravels the unexpected emotional resonance of the sun bear, carrying the reader through this subverted sonnet with a masterful eye for the cinematic. There's a remarkable brilliance to it. This poem is a reminder that we are tender and obsolete, the type of poem that makes you feel changed after reading it.
Close Sonnet #8
What i mean is that we trust in narrative.
we turn on the drama to watch the
drama but know damn well over time
the love interest will be love. the cancer
will be treated. the sun bear will get his
star fruit. the sun bear types numbers
into spreadsheets even though he knows
computers are getting smarter. for fucks
sake there are bills to be paid
yes the sun bear knows that one day his job will be obsolete. but right now
it’s raining outside can’t you just let the sun bears kiss? the movies are supposed
to seem like life because we like things that we can relate to. the sun bear who
can time travel finds his way back home. it’s worked out for the sun bear so far.
don’t tell him to think any different now.
Sean Cho A. is the author of American Home (Autumn House 2021) winner of the Autumn House Publishing chapbook contest. His work can be future found or ignored in Copper Nickel, Pleiades, The Penn Review, The Massachusetts Review, Nashville Review, among others. He is currently an MFA candidate at the University of California Irvine and the associate editor of THRUSH Poetry Journal. Find him @phlat_soda.
