There Is an Opening
The river moves
from one place to another.
Immigrant, overflowing
with what we can’t name
in just a single word:
cup full, braid undone.
Your words roll with mine
so that we don’t know
where we began
and where we’ll end,
two places at once.
The poem is a tributary
in which I swim
toward other poems,
the light on the water,
the sound of an opening.
The river shows me the way.
I can feel it as we speak.
Exit Now
past miles of neon green fields
the cows mistaken for cars
speed limit 75 half-blue sky
thin fence five-string guitar
not your mama’s yard
wind-ripped flags
For Sale Make America 2024
McDonald’s sign an altar
before columns of smoke
Exit Now God Loves You
broken-down churches
through the windows
the river trickles trees blur
like the yellow lines
what are they trying to tell us
leaves waving in the wind
goodbye goodbye
Diana Keren Lee is a Korean American poet. The winner of a 2024 Poetry Society of America Chapbook Fellowship, her work has appeared in Boston Review, Denver Quarterly, Hayden’s Ferry Review, The New Republic, Pleiades, Prelude, and elsewhere. She has received support from MacDowell, Yaddo, and NYU, where she was a Goldwater Fellow.