Walking down University to meet a tavern, sprained wrist and twisted ankle from wrestling everything and everyone but certainty, I relish the annoyance of exercise. I haven’t left my front yard for a week. Chinook winds thawed just enough to be treacherous. Now the smell of halibut melts and curly fries plea through Celsius and Fahrenheit’s renewed agreement. I have been dancing with the dog and serenading firewood. Someone asks me if I need a ride. I think I might recognize the car, the shrouded voice, but I don’t. Just another stranger in an SUV. Just another gasp of air becoming steam. Appreciating the gesture, I graciously decline and keep walking, listening to Waits, watching his trains trundle toward the station. I consider whether there’s a difference between running away and retreating home. Ceremoniously, I tread around sangria snow cones, stains of a moose bludgeoned by Bronco. My friend keeps a large caliber revolver in his lockbox for just such occasions. Mercy comes in many forms, and here, in winter’s midst, mercy isn’t clement weather. Further down the road, twilight smells like kindergarten. I fancy a shower in snow, but sandwiches and whiskey are waiting. It’s a cellophane night, and I am remembering my heartbeat. Wrapping myself in its stars, impulse apprehends. I whistle loudly at the Lights. I issue winter a challenge.
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Eddie Kim received his MFA in Poetry from the University of Alaska Fairbanks. He is a Kundiman fellow from Seattle. His poems have appeared in Poetry Northwest, The Margins, The Collagist (now The Rupture), Pinwheel, Lantern Review, South Dakota Review, and others. His poem “김장” was a 2022 winner for “Best of the Net”—selected by Mai Der Vang—and his poem “Telephone of the Wind” was featured on Tracy K. Smith’s iteration of the podcast, The Slowdown.