When I clone my grandmother, I make sure
I don’t include any of her memories.
Her childhood where Japanese soldiers with swords
roamed around the village built with straws,
the days waiting for her never-to-return father
staring at the fields and the days
she wouldn’t even have time to stretch her back
to wonder why her father is not coming back.
When I clone my grandmother, I make sure
I give her all the existing knowledge in the world.
She will read and write in every language,
sing all the poetry, everlasting images of the world
spinning and the waves retracting. She will
understand all the secrets that power this planet,
the time zones, the planes, the moon filling up,
the four seasons, and the afterlife.
When I clone my grandmother, I make sure
she doesn’t feel any pain. The clogged
vessels in her brain, the bent
back, the rundown kneecaps, acid rising
up and down her body like a tide.
When I clone my grandmother, I make sure
I make her my grandmother. Blue veins emerging
through wrinkles, a web of burst
capillaries engraving a forest of baobab
trees on her legs: all the parasitic vigor.
Dabin Jeong
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 GASHER, Up the Staircase Quarterly, Indiana Review, Brooklyn Poets, Perhappened mag, and Chogwa zine.
