Save (Me From) the Whales

"Cetaphobia" by June Park

Some people are afraid of heights, or airplane travel, or public speaking, or spiders. I am not afraid of any of these things--in fact, I like them all--but, as some of you may remember, I am afraid of whales.

Read the essay at The Atlantic.

Save (Me From) the Whales

Goodness gracious me. My essay about confronting my whale phobia—remember that one?—is finally in print. And oh, look...it's the cover story!

The folks at Open Minds Quarterly are lovely, and I highly encourage sending them your money in exchange for copies of the magazine.

Read more here.

Well, It's Not Poetry, But It Is a Thing, Written Down

Remember the blue whale on the ceiling? I went back. A miniature version of the article I wrote about that visit was published this weekend in the Washington Post. You can read it on page 9 of the magazine, or online here. With luck, I can publish the full-length article soon, too.

My Mother Encounters Celebrities and I Misunderstand

I.

One winter before I was born
my mother stepped into an elevator.
The silent brass doors slid
together too quickly and she toppled,
landing face-first

in Baryshnikov's striped mink coat.
She told me this when I was six
and leaping, a blizzard of tulle
and breathlessness around
her rocking chair. As I remember it,

I say now, He was rude to you.
Did Baryshnikov really push you?


Short, she says, looking over
the Sunday Style section. I didn't say rude.
I said short.




photograph by Chuck Domitrovich

Catching Up with An Ex Over Coffee

Tell me, he says, about one time
you've been drunk. He doesn't say,
I dare you. He doesn't say, don't lie.
He doesn't say, how much do you think
you've really changed? I set my jaw
against the blows. In Brooklyn, once,
I say. My TA's apartment.
Across the too-small table I know
the gears are turning.
I don't say, After you, of course.
I say that it was February. Post-
theatre, back through the carving night
to his cold rooms. I say he showed me
cyanotypes, the skeletons of flowers,
pictures from Poland I'd already seen.
I say he brought out pepper vodka, that
his lanky frame had got a taste for it, but I,
tiny I, sputtered as his roommate laughed.
I tell how the dim bathroom
was slanted when I got there, how
the cold water sizzled on my flushed cheeks.
I do not say, I would have slept on the floor
but he did not have blankets enough. I do not say,
The next morning he talked to me
like a stranger. I say
he left me in Central Park,
an angel in the snow, beneath the 6am silence
of Jeanne-Claude and Christo's spectacle.
I say it was just breathtaking.



pinhole photograph by Tom Karlo

Through Windows, Early Darkness

The train crawls toward the city.
Nothing has ever been maddening slow
as this swerving car, yet the toy houses smear
like a jellied lens. Each lighted window
demands my intrusion. On the top floor
of a building like the one
where you used to live, a young woman sits
at the table, jars of spices spread before her
like chess pieces. Her dark hair
sweeps the dried-basil bishops. Her tears drop
on the tablecloth. The train
lurches on, passes over an unlit road
where just one car is traveling.



image by flickr user magnasoma

Well, Jiminy Cricket!

Ever been to a face-melting-ly wonderful poetry reading? Now's your chance. Come join me at The Torch Club at Waverly Place in Greenwich Village, this Friday, December 5 at 6pm. I'll be reading a few of my more recent works, as will six other students in NYU's SCPS writing program.

Waiting, Grand Central Ceiling

Aries, clamber from the sky.
My cold soil aches to break with
A stamp of your hoof, a toss
Of your horns. Frost is strong; your
Star-fur thicker. Dig until
The hole can hold you, love: rest
In the nest of my body.




photograph by Arvin Rolly Antipolo

An Open Letter to the Blue Whale on the Ceiling

You were, if such a thing
is possible, even bigger than I
remembered.

The rest of the room had shrunk
as I grew; infinite clatter and light
grew sapphire and silent,
and the ceiling--horrible ceiling--
had dropped.

The baby ran from taxidermied sea lions
to brass-dipped giant clams,
excitedly pointing out
the empty scallop shell beside the roaring beasts,
the way the letters of the clam's name glowed
in the underwater dark.

I walked the full length of this blue ballroom
before finding your eye,
flat and empty in its painted depth.
You did not blink, but neither
did I, floating stunned in the currents
of your terrifying, shy smile.

Children ran beneath you dizzily
singing sea shanties,
while onscreen the jellyfish
unfolded her glittering heart.