Comfort – The Journal

On Wednesday, I ate plain yogurt.
!50!Opened a notebook. Vivaldi
as I folded my laundry.

It was his birthday. On Wednesday,
!50!it rained. On the succulents,
on the surviving women.

Tricked or taken, carted to Japanese soldiers.
!50!The condom said, Attack Number One.
It was rinsed for reuse. On Wednesday,

I listened to The Four Seasons.
!50!It stopped raining. It never stopped
raining. On Wednesdays, it rains

for the children they bore. For the children
!50!they could not bear. For the children
they were. Give them this day. Give them

Vivaldi, violin, give them the all-girls choir.
!50!L’inverno, come and gone. All four seasons,
come and gone. On Wednesday,

nothing happened. Rain evaporated,
!50!and so did the concertos.
Wednesdays ago, the women,

the girls, clutched each other. Who will live,
!50!who will leave, who believes this life.
The world will be better after you and me.

Emily Jungmin Yoon’s work has appeared/is forthcoming in Pinwheel, The Collagist, The Offing, Best of the Net 2014, & elsewhere. She won Ploughshares' Emerging Writer's Contest and WC&C Scholarship Competition in 2015. She is the Poetry Editor at at The Margins, the literary magazine of the Asian American Writers' Workshop, and a PhD candidate in East Asian Languages and Civilizations at the University of Chicago.