the louderARTS Project

Helen Yum

Helen Yum has read her poetry at universities, galleries, prisons, conferences and community centers across the country including A Gathering of the Tribes, the Martinez Gallery, Harvard, Yale, Princeton, Swarthmore and the University of Colorado. She has also read her poetry as part of the Asian American Writers’ Workshop’s National Literary Caravan, and helped curate (re)collection, which was the first Asian-American open mic/poetry series in New York City. As a therapeutic social worker, she has provided therapy and advocacy for domestic violence survivors, sexually abused children, and incarcerated youth. She was also an advisory board member for the human rights group ECPAT-USA (End Child Trafficking, Child Pornography, and the Trafficking of Children for Sexual Purposes). She currently lives in Hawaii.

for kia, who asked me to write her a poem

kia, I wish I were therapist enough
to smooth out those memories
that sit in our past, those lumps
of immovable, of unchangeable

fact: the violation; fiction:
that we’re forever victims.
survivors. defined always
in reference to those things.

those things.

it’s easy to treat them
like lurking monsters.

don’t be afraid.

of that which lies abandoned,
at the tip of your hands, within
the range of your voice; there
is something unrecovered, pathless,

avoided. the fear that leaves it
untouched is obvious. illusion.
mirage. visage of hope. it can haunt,
but it can be reconciled. it’s not
an easy excuse. it can’t be
discounted, can’t always be

explained. it breathes. sometimes,
it brings rage, sometimes, it stills;
it challenges; to fight; to resign
to memory;

pervasive. it takes the color
of loss. of the false accusations
you make against yourself.
the inconsistent shape of tears.
the persistence of their taste:
isolated, condemned, forever
fucked, it is

illusion. it’s only a tiny piece
of the person that you are.
its glare is tenuous. it becomes clearer

when you look at it. it’s only one
reference point in the constellation
of cradled kisses and hard shit
it takes to make this, you,

kia, our lives can seem scraggly.
indecipherable. but hold it up
to the sky, see light
peeking through the gaps,
and see what I see:

beautiful constellation.

© Helen Yum