Monica Youn
Sundeck
The flowerpot clogged with evidence of a panic
long since obsolete: thready roots that branched out
desperately in last month’s drought now a fibrous mass
of dead matter. Such complexity is hard to look at,
the way the sumac’s compound leaves hurt the eyes,
each leaflet backlit against the glare, each twitching
separately but simultaneously– an infestation
like the little anthills stippling the coarse lawn.
Late August and the mind seeks smoothness,
cultivates a sleek, ungenerous unconcern –
the lawnmowers endlessly, ruthlessly shearing life
back to its known forms. Beyond the bungalows,
the tattered beach, the bladder buoy sings of the simple
ocean, all whole notes: B flat…B flat…B flat...
Monica Youn is the author of Blackacre (forthcoming Graywolf Press 2016), Ignatz (Four Way Books 2010), which was a finalist for the National Book Award, and Barter (Graywolf Press 2003). Her poems have been widely published in journals and anthologies, including The New Republic, The New Yorker, The Paris Review, Poetry, and The Best American Poetry. She has been awarded the Wallace Stegner Fellowship at Stanford University and the Witter Bynner Fellowship of the Library of Congress as well as residencies from the Civitella Ranieri Foundation, the Rockefeller Foundation Bellagio, the MacDowell Colony, and the Corporation of Yaddo. She currently teaches poetry at Princeton University.
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