If the sea on which we sail is asbestos
then there is no storm. The sea swallowed it
long before science hushed angels
whispering profanities the scribes overheard
We read these poets to challenge our solitudes
erected by alchemy, the phoenix nesting
night horsemen who suddenly stop
the lions that held us when we were young
holding us now as we fail, as we gesture
for another cigarette because we need
but cannot ask, Please give me your heart
Your heart destroying itself between my lips
Its poison to suck inside my chest, its fire mine
Jennifer Kwon Dobbs was born in Won Ju Si, South Korea. Her first book of poetry, Paper Pavilion (2007), won the White Pine Press Poetry Prize and the New England Poetry Club’s Sheila Motton Book Award. Her essays, reviews, and poems have appeared recently in journals such as Blackbird, Crazyhorse, KoreAM, Marsh Hawk Review, Review Revue, and MiPOesias, have been anthologized in Echoes Upon Echoes (Asian American Writers Workshop 2003) and Language for a New Century (W. W. Norton 2008), and have been translated into Greek, Turkish, and Korean. She received her Ph.D. from the University of Southern California and is the founding director of the SummerTIME Writing Program, a college access program for inner-city Los Angeles students. She is currently assistant professor of creative writing at St. Olaf College, in Minnesota, Minneapolis.