Eunsong Kim
Soft Soaps: All About Bali
1.
gramsci reference check. explanation of hegemony check. the importance of a love triangle check.
queer transitional objects check. critique of transnational capital check. the deconstruction of
abstraction & value check. exposing the consolidation of corporate power check. the affective
powers of the proletariat check.
check check check.
2.
please be sure to insert a marketable piece of jewelry
that the long lost lovers lost
or members of the triangles give to one another
so that we might negotiate with the various vendors
on the appropriate brand/object placement
—thank you in advance
3.
Does she understand:
social climbing doesn't work!
SOCIAL CLIMBING WORKS
4.
Lied to keep you
Ill
Fallen
Capitalist
Broken to keep you
5.
he tells her:
I see myself in you
I see how our bodies work
for the same machine
everything except marry you—
6.
ask for a yacht
the summer house
a museum
dump the shopping and
ask for the military
what are you doing?
7.
I did it for debt
Debt did it for me.
He paid and
We paid and
There you are.
On the screen so
Don't forget
Now that it’s gone.
8.
the poor and the vermin
plot the revolution
because it’s the sexy thing to do
9.
How many voices do you have inside
brain trauma, forgetting, I don’t remember how to remember
plastic surgery, orphanages, war—
10.
first you must endure my humiliation
then the contract
then, and after then
the longing
11.
you’re pretty because you have nothing
12.
Love save my day—
Eunsong Kim is a writer and educator residing in southern California. Her essays on literature, digital cultures, and art criticism have appeared and are forthcoming in Scapegoat, Lateral, The New Inquiry, Model View Culture, AAWW’s The Margins, and in the book anthologies Global Poetics and Reading Modernism with Machines. Her poetry has or will been published in Denver Quarterly, Seattle Review, Feral Feminisms, Minnesota Review, Interim, Iowa Review, and Action, Yes. Her first book of poems will be published by Noemi press in 2017.
More from Vol. 33, Issue 1
Soft Soaps: All About Bali
Eunsong Kim
Shadow Thief
David Koehn
West Virginia, or What Do You Want Me to Say? // The Inner Life // ... // Where to Start
Mary Ann Samyn
“Without baseball, life would be a mistake.” // When the Bear Dances
Phil Tabakow
from Testament
G.C. Waldrep
I. The Magician // XX. Judgment // XXI. The World from Arcana
Hanna Andrews
Blake’s Fairy Funeral // ... // Gilchrist Paints Felpham // Song to Anna Flaxman’s Joy
Geoffrey Babbitt
Morning of Song from The Anatolian Tapestry
Dawn-Michelle Baude
Fortune
Laura Chalar
Long gone lonesome // A beetle in the screen
Nathan Hauke