Brian Ji: Poetry Collection

A Slow Decline

Farmers wake, farm their fields.

Their wives tend hearth and home,

chickens, pull milk from cows,

slop the pigs. Fishermen struggle

against fleets of slowly departing

commercial ships, haul in smaller

catches of ever-smaller fish.

But entangled seals barbed in wire

loosely fit, don’t care, burgeon

swollen into a razor sharp ring

cuts through flippers, neck, and tail,

chokes, slowly amputates does

an ostentatious necklace

flashy, glinting beneath a grayish

overly hot and hazing sun,

an aftermath of plastic, fish hooks,

fossil fuel blackened air, and tons

and tons of rank and raw sewage.

Tripping the Sky Fantastic

Clouds soar,

don’t drift away.

Outstretched

like swans,

they hide behind

colors assumed

by sky.

Flying formationed

horizon bound,

clouds dissipate,

morph into fish

yearning to be,

to become,

to forever dwell

within the cloudy

confines of a print

cut from wood.

About the Author:

Brian Ji is a seventeen-year-old writer attending Seoul International School in South Korea. His work has appeared in Lullwater Literary Magazine, SCOPE Magazine, and VOICES Literary Journal. Outside of writing, he enjoys playing racket sports.