Cult Of
Cult of feathers: birds plucked to extinction, stuffed with buckshot, offerings
for countless adorned hats. Cult of personality, dripping in gold, larger
than life, pulled against gravity, luminous as a dream. Cult of Dionysis & red
wine & fast fashion. Obsession could almost look like love in some lights. Its excessive
or misplaced veneration. Cult of vengeance, as in dig two graves, as in ‘I’m owed
an eye’ as in My name is ________ prepare to die. Cult of clubbing in stilettos
with class in the morning & where’s my phone & Asian flush to wazoo, girls vomiting soju:
Cult of metallic thigh-highs, baby-deer-like down Hongdae alleys. Overindulgence
of anything, even adoration, tastes like danger. Glut & idolatry. Cult of smoke
& mirrors, as in: I look like my father, his fears & wandering eyes, his chewed
cigars. Cult of the constant hunger of shadows. As in how I, who hates to owe
for anything, begged so many strangers for approval, love, one lit cigarette.
Turtle Ship
My father loved to tell me about the first iron ship, the geobukseon (거북선) or “turtle ship,” which was
instrumental military technology in Korea’s Joseon era. The ship defended the Korean peninsula from invasion
for nearly 400 years. In the 1980s, my father’s family emigrated from Seoul to the United States.
We left our home
and we never looked
back, though the wind
spat in our faces
and the tides below the boats
begged us to turn
around, fatherland
fading into blue
mountains, vanished
persimmon trees, our
grandparents’ still & mighty
graves. We watched great
serpents strangle the waters, bit
into raw sea cucumbers.
We buried our names
at sea, baptized our tongues
in the salt of a new
horizon, blistered
fingers on sunned
wood and ropes severed
from our birthplace.
Hope sailed with us,
the turtle shell shielding
our backs, hope, the chop
stick we poked into turtle
brains to bleed them
for soup during war. Hope,
another kind of meal
we drank day after day,
aubade of bitter iron
& brine. Hope: the life
jackets lost to storms,
hope, the ship vomiting
us into a foreign state. Hope
the iron shoes we built
out of its body, and hope,
our home, old
& new, the land
that devoured us.
Arah Ko is a writer from Hawai'i, the author of Brine Orchid (YesYes Books 2025), and the chapbook Animal Logic (Bull City Press 2026). Her work has been nominated for the Pushcart Anthology, Best of Net, and Best New Poets and is published or forthcoming in American Poetry Review, Ninth Letter, The Threepenny Review, Poetry Northwest, and elsewhere. She received her M.F.A. in creative writing from the Ohio State University and is a Ph.D. student in creative writing at the University of Cincinnati. Catch her at arahko.com