By Jimin Lee
I mankind my neighbors: I transfuse their blood / into my own, hoping / to mend my
past / and to reincarnate. / Every organism worships / unconscious: dogs for bones,
humans for gold, and I / for sacrifice. / Always craving, I embrace myself / for war,
trade teeth / for bullets. / In this country / survival is ownership of the language. / I
drown words / and ritualize silence, the sour bite of it / anchored to my lips. / When I
finish, I wait / for children to grow into mouths. / History tells me: destruction / is an
act of creation. / I tempest / and hunger. / I never mourn.
Jimin Lee is a Korean-American writer and high school student attending Seoul International School. She has been named a 2019 Finalist in Writing (Poetry) by the National YoungArts Foundation and a finalist for The Penn Review Poetry Prize. Her writings have appeared or are forthcoming in The Penn Review, Watershed Review, Crashtest Magazine, The Rising Phoenix Review, and The Daphne Review. Jimin is the founder and Editor-In-Chief of The Ideate Review and an alumnus of the Juniper Institute for Young Writers.