밤 (v) to give death (n) chestnut, night

I clung to my grandfather’s back

like a beetle on a sesame leaf

every time he leapt over chasms

to take me mountain raspberry hunting.

He hit trees with a long wooden rod

and chestnuts fell from the sky.

His palms broke the spindly shields

when knives couldn’t split the burr.

Once, we picked out the prettiest chicken

and the strangled squawks bubbled

into the best chicken porridge I’ve ever had.

A trellis of  buzzing fly paper always smacked

his forehead and he never flinched. Tombstones

line the terraced hills next to fields of soybeans

and tobacco. Is there no magic from my mouth

when I say that my grandfather is dead—

that I still don’t really care? My mouth

dressed in fried breadcrumbs, like the fish

on the table—a low ah escaping my lips

curling over my teeth to say  밤.