Flag Sijo
“No water now is sweet enough to slake this ghostly thirst.”
– Marci Calabretta Cancio-Bello, “Song of Thirst: Six Sijo”
☰ | 건
Dear father, there are many ways to say I love you. I carry
your silence like a gwishin, wandering ghost without
a home. The air is crisp. I don’t believe in heaven anymore.
☷ | 곤
I am the winter daughter, dark-eyed and silver-haired, conceived
in the hull of a sunken ship. I am the moon rabbit sailing
across the sky in a little white boat with a cinnamon tree.
☵ | 감
My son was born under the Aries sun. Cardinal fire,
curved ram horn alight and taking aim. He teaches me to
be a soft pillow to land on. He shows me how to be brave.
☲ | 리
The summer I became an eomeoni I drank so much water.
Filled my body like it was a thirsty seed aching to burst. Where
does the earth end and I begin? My leaves turn toward the light.
Tiana Nobile
TIANA NOBILE 문영신 is the author of Cleave (Hub City Press, 2021). She is a Korean American adoptee, artist, educator, and recipient of a Rona Jaffe Foundation Writer’s Award. Her writing has appeared in Poetry Northwest, The New Republic, and Southern Cultures, among others. She lives with her family in New Orleans, Louisiana. For more, visit www.tiananobile.com