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For Hope
Where to look.
Dusk out of which tomorrow strains,
a giraffe’s neck. An infant’s mouth
where hunger hardens into incisors.
Each crisis tightens like the August
atmosphere, before you take
into account too many outliers.
How many choices become a personality?
I can’t safely say without the statistics
degree when lapses overstep the boundary.
The shrimp ravioli disagrees with me.
I’ll never know if the bee buried
headfirst in the tankard of a bluebell
is directing its butt, fat
with pollen, at God on purpose.
Or if the woodpecker takes its beak
from one cedar to another
as a green, green apprentice.
Anything served atop ice cubes
disagrees with me. But I take a leap
of faith every time I order a drink.
A carpenter spider shucks
pulsing thoughts off its prey
before you stomp it to bad luck.
I’ll never know after how many stabs
to give up on trust. I’d like to believe
the topography of the universe
I’ve never travelled myself, the less
than a millionth of human life
I haven’t studied that’s been figured out
or the danger of not getting enough
sun, petri dishes stacking up
out of sight.
Most theories get replaced.
Most faiths. You know, we used to think
animals can’t feel.
I may be wrong when I say
love has nothing on a small act of kindness,
at least the true kind.
But those who say otherwise
broach their peaceful countries, childhoods
free of draft dodgers, borders drawn
at borders, even when we share
the same country
of blindfolded feelings, feeling.
I’m tired of explaining myself.
As in: I order something
with lobster, because I love
pleasure, as much
as I can, as long as I can
afford, the taste, what’s best,
with white wine. Look
where the cove smooths like a porcupine
in mating, this imagined, eye-of-the-storm
cove in a poem, I’d like to believe
in something great down there.
Suphil Lee Park (수필 리 박 / 秀筆 李 朴) is the author of the poetry collection Present Tense Complex, winner of the Marystina Santiestevan Prize (Conduit Books & Ephemera 2021), and has recently won the 2021 Indiana Review Fiction Prize. Her recent work appears or is forthcoming in the Iowa Review, the Los Angeles Review, and the New Republic, among others. You can find more about her at: https://suphil-lee-park.com/
Roger Camp is the author of three photography books including the award winning Butterflies in Flight (Thames & Hudson, 2002) and Heat, Charta, Milano (2008). His documentary photography has been awarded the prestigious Leica Medal of Photography. His photographs are represented by the Robin Rice Gallery, NYC.