Wine cup with ear handles, 15th century
Hyejung Kook
The shape plain, its white glaze pocked
and pitted, brown touching the edges.
A slight indentation inflects the curve
just beneath the mouth, and I can see
the shape of the potter’s hands, pressing
then releasing the clay. I can feel how
my fingers would fit through the handles
and the cup would settle into my palms.
I’d offer wine during jesa, the ancestral rites,
never mind that I’m not a son, then bow,
left hand over right, knees and forehead
and palms pressing into the floor, then
rising and falling and rising again,
my heart aching--I feel it all, looking
at a white cup I will never touch.
Hyejung Kook’s poetry has most recently appeared or is forthcoming in Hyphen Magazine, The Indianapolis Review, Prairie Schooner, Pleiades, Tinderbox Poetry Journal, and wildness, Other works include an essay in The Critical Flame and Flight, a chamber opera libretto. She is a Fulbright grantee and a Kundiman fellow.