This selection, chosen by managing editor Krista Cox, is from Daughter of Three Gone Kingdoms by Joan Kwon Glass (Perugia Press 2024).
Bloodline
The god 환웅 begged his father
to let him leave Heaven and inhabit Earth,
and his wish was granted.
On Mt. Taebaeksan he met Ungnyeo the bear,
who passed the test to eat only mugwort
and garlic for twenty-one days,
then was transformed into a woman.
She and 환웅 gave birth to 단군,
founder of the neolithic Gojoseon kingdom,
earliest known human civilization of Korea.
The first Koreans were part god, part beast.
Every morning I look in the mirror and ask:
Which will I be today?
Joan Kwon Glass is a Korean diasporic author, winner of the 2024 Perugia Press Poetry Prize for Daughter of Three Gone Kingdoms, and author of Night Swim, winner of the Diode Book Prize (Diode Editions, 2022), as well as the chapbooks How to Make Pancakes for a Dead Boy (Harbor Editions, 2022) and If Rust Can Grow on the Moon (Milk & Cake Press, 2022). Her poems have been featured in The Margins (Asian American Writers’ Workshop), Poetry, Poetry Daily, Poetry Northwest, Prairie Schooner, Salamander, The Slowdown, Tahoma Literary Review, and elsewhere. She lives in coastal Connecticut where she is a public school educator, and she teaches poetry at writing centers throughout the country.
Krista Cox is the Managing Editor of Sundress Publications, The Wardrobe, and Doubleback Review. She’s a poet and editor and currently pursuing her master’s in clinical mental health counseling. She’s just trying to stay hydrated while she fights the system.
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