Alex Park: Poetry Collection

I. 사진신부 (The picture bride)  

My great-grandmother. 

She came to this country  

folded inside her own dreams. 

She crossed an ocean, 

left one pocket of Earth for another. 

She was just sixteen then. 

All I have of great-grandma’s life - 

pictures, tales from my mama. 

An old faded, crinkled photograph,  

of sugar plantation laborer and dejected picture bride 

at their dockside wedding ceremony -  

staged before a gray sea with 

high curls of waves tossed by strong winds. 

II. 여정 (The Journey) 

1908, from Busan to Yokohama, to Honolulu, 

on bunk beds stacked three high, 

she, then, just sixteen alone 

endures stench permeating the ship. 

She is tossed and rolled  

for twenty eight days. 

She grasps tight the picture of a man, her husband-to-be.  

like a life vest.  

Upon arrival, she is to wed him.  

She was just sixteen then. 

III. 첫 만남 (The Meeting)  

Sinks her heart,  

meeting the groom in the flesh, for the first time. 

A man of thirty, weathered by work in the green seas of sugarcane.  

wearing a face, resigned to a hard life in the canefields. 

She cried for eight days, but relinquished. 

She was just sixteen then. 

He gazes at her, a shy child of a bride,  

wrapped in faded Hanbok. 

His hand trembles as he unties her Jeogori. 

A hint of guilt engulfs him -  

to falsify himself, as though he was a store clerk,  

sheltered from the endless winds of the canefield.  

The image he’d sent, a deception to his young bride. 

All he wanted, a wife, to take a wedding vow. 

He presses his dry, chapped lips, against her soft ones.  

“You are a sweet girl.” 

She was just sixteen then. 

All I have of great-grandma’s life are questions, 

But no answers. 

“What keepsakes did you take to cross the ocean?” 

… 

“What words did you first exchange with your husband?” 

… 

… 

… 

She was just sixteen then. 

(END)

About the Author:

Alex Park is a seventeen year old writer based in Connecticut. He has been recognized by the Alliance for Young Artists & Writers and the Ayn Rand Institute among others. He is an alumnus of the Young Writers Residential Workshop at Kenyon College. Outside of writing, he is passionate about public speaking, culture, and advocacy.