Shifts: Temporal/Tense Poem
Sean Cho A.
| poetry
Tonight I am tired and will not sleep.
There are many dreams I could have
had. For instance, as a boy I dreamed
about being older, like my brother,
who studied computer science. Or
like before being “American,” my father
dreamed of America. I don’t want
to go outside because it is February,
and back then I didn’t have friends
because friendship is mostly built
on common interests/familiarity. At
Painted Rock Elementary no one looked
like me. In Des Moines no one
looks like me. It is very difficult
to learn a new language. In Busan
it is already tomorrow. Over
the phone I tell my grandfather,
I’m sorry I didn’t call on his birthday.
gwaenchanh-a, he responds. I nod.
And he hears the absence of understanding.
Sean Cho A. is the author of American Home (Autumn House, 2021) winner of the Autumn House Press chapbook contest. His work can be found or ignored in Copper Nickel, Pleiades, The Penn Review, The Massachusetts Review, and Nashville Review, among others.