Rumpus Original Poetry: Two Poems by Dabin Jeong

Grandmother’s Haiku over the Phone

What time is it there
It is like the world is flipped
Have you eaten yet

What time is it there
It’s like an opposite world
Have you eaten yet

What time is it there
It’s like the world’s upside down
Have you eaten yet

What time is it there
It is like another world
Have you eaten yet

What time is it there
Are you going to sleep now
Have you eaten yet

What time is it there
Is there even rice to eat
It’s warm like spring here

Granddaughter’s Haibun

Is it safe to go outside a day after being snowed in? I wouldn’t know and neither do my eyes as they lift the feathers of the blind to peek at the white concrete. I just received the news that my grandfather fell down, broke his hip, and is still alive. I know the face of survival, the one with removable dentures. My grandmother has been en pointe at the edge of death since I was born. Consoling her over her contact-deficient husband on a hospital bed: a certain obligation. We open the conversation with six deep furrows over her half-eyebrows, making her face all walnut. (I have already written about her macerated eyelids and brain smooth like a lotus seed.) I am covered under the green patches and she asks if it is bedtime already. The worldly mystery she has yet to comprehend is the time zone. Yogurt has been my main sustenance which I substitute with soybean paste soup for her face. She would rather be sad and alone. I yell to her face: don’t be sad and alone. Five minutes. She asks what time it is where I am. We fall into a pattern like an old couple, a choreography I follow six times every time. She is distracted by all her daughters caring about her. Wants to leave my puffed-up face that is neither here nor there. Without buttons to feel, she can’t leave. My mother interjects and chuckles: She doesn’t remember. In the background, a fade of my grandmother’s ticking dentures.

What time is it there It is like the world is flipped Have you eaten yet What time is it there It’s like an opposite world Have you eaten yet What time is it there It’s like the world’s upside down Have you eaten yet What time is it there It is like another world Have you eaten yet What time is it there Are you going to sleep now Have you eaten yet What time is it there Is there even rice to eat It’s warm like spring here

***
Author photograph courtesy of Dabin Jeong

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Dabin Jeong (they/she) is a poet and translator from Seoul, South Korea. Their poem won the Chestnut Review's 2021 Stubborn Writer's Contest, selected by Dorothy Chan. Their works appeared or are forthcoming in Quarterly West, DIALOGIST, The Maine Review, GASHER Journal, Up the Staircase Quarterly, Indiana Review, Brooklyn Poets, and Chogwa zine.

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The Rumpus publishes original fiction, poetry, literary humor writing, comics, essays, book reviews, and interviews with authors and artists of all kinds. Our mostly volunteer-run magazine strives to be a platform for risk-taking voices and writing that might not find a home elsewhere. We lift up new voices alongside those of more established writers our readers may already know and love. We want to bring new perspectives into the conversation that will make us all look deeper.

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