Bundled together in a single bed like Chaucer’s 
pilgrims, ears of corn shiver in their emerald coats. 

The market is freezing yet the top ones sweat. They suffer 
the tampering that musses 

their wiry brown hair as they shelter 
the pale silk. Shoppers rip, tear, 

strip them bare, and when finished 
searching for perfection, toss most back.

All night the store lights bore into them. 
Even sunlight’s more forgiving.

Together they erect a pyramid to honor summer, built 
to last no longer than a season.

They dream of home fields where the sun kicked 
up a breeze and they swayed as one in a slow dance. 

Long days when mice nibbled their necks, 
not taking all that much.

On the bottom, they feel the weight, the dark safe 
covering of kin. They hope for salvation

like anyone who’s taken precarious cover, convinced 
they won’t be found. But they are. 

And when we place them on our fires, their golden 
spirits rise as steam. 

They leave us to our anxious shuffling 	
as we wait to be the chosen ones.
                        

At 2 a.m. Korea time, my son roams the streets carrying 
treats for stray cats. They run to him weaving through his legs. 

He wanders before returning to his single room sewed 
into a slim alley crisscrossed by wires. 

It’s morning here when he calls, rants about the faults 
and obligations of his world. I stay quiet.

I don’t know where he’s going
but I’m sure he isn’t calling for directions.

His city cools, sloughs off days of tramping feet 
and roaring motorbikes delivering bibimbap.

He sends video of a cat the neighbors call Little Miss Flower. 
She darts from under a Hyundai plastered with emojis. 

Unattached, they meet between the streetlights, breathing 
the easy darkness.

But couldn’t he do this someplace closer? 

Then I remember a similar distance, and how it opened 
a late-night knowledge that still comes running to me.
                        

“…she did not know what it was she feared, but it had to do with empty sardine cans in the sink.”
 –Play It as it Lays, Joan Didion

If you say sink, 

		I see a silhouette who takes her dinner 
		leaning over a drain.
					
		Or how to weep privately on an overnight flight. 
		That woman’s eyes a few rows back.


If you say cans, 

		I remember faded labels at the dollar store, dented 
		peaches, stew, and beans.

		Or a strand of tins warning of newlyweds.
		A celebration that clanks.
	

If you say sardines, 

		I think how a cannery crams cold fish together
		until they mold to each other’s form. 
 
		Or how a house constricts,
		unbreathable when the marriage ends.


If you say empty, 

		that’s when I know.