her fingers pour across the neck of haegeum

imprints in the paulownia wood

rosined horsehair on two silk strings

singing metal, clay, hide, and stone

beside her the bamboo flutes, the poplar buks

bearing painted blue dragons

tufts of jade and coral-pink

the tricolored taegeuk stretched taught on leather skin

in the royal court the musician watches the other women float 

their arms into formation

green plum skirts wrapping porcelain thighs

cornflower sheaths circle a dancer’s waist

their blushing cheeks like strawberry-pears

as they paint lions, birds, butterflies to the pulse

of hourglass-drums

before the king

circle five dancers

their white sleeves like delicate 

blossoms unfurling 

carved-szechuan masks dyed to 

raspberry wine

peach branches braided

into each forehead

with slow footsteps, sweeping arms, four become

the seasons—blue spring, red summer, 

white fall, black winter

tartar earrings swaying, their heads bowed

while she sits, face obscured by lantern silk as

each season-color fades into the rhythm of history

the sparrow eyes of old men

gouged into their laughing crimson visages

a thousand years pass with kings of shilla joining 

lovers, sons, brothers into the grave

she yearns for longevity

not the mere stamping of her name beside another's

onto tombstone 

she fears the fate of a fallen eyelash

in a china cup

disintegrated beside tea leaves and swallowed

in the royal court consorts sigh

prettily into their sleeves

hoping the glint of hanbok threads

wipes away their exhaustion

one consort’s strand of hair strays out of place

the black like ink on her pearlescent skin

only the musician notices

she too remembers how it felt to mar perfection

when she snapped her haegeum bow

how the horse hair bled powder onto moonlit tiles

running her fingers along the fraying edges

she felt them reattach

to paulownia wood, two silk strings

cannibalizing their own emptiness

Notes

haegeum - traditional Korean fiddle, two stringed vertical instrument

buk - traditional Korean drum 

taegeuk - Confucian icon symbolizing polarity and cosmic balance

hanbok - traditional Korean clothing