New Voices Contest, 2nd Place Winner: Anything You Can Find in the World You Can Find in the Body by Ae Hee Lee
Of the 2022 New Voices Contest second place winner, the judge José Olivarez states, “Ae Hee Lee’s poem Anything You Can Find in the World You Can Find in the Body is a beautiful poem. Look at the way a man bleeding out is transformed by an eleven-year-old imagination into “glistening crimson/ pearls strawberry candies.” It’s a violent moment, but the language is so gorgeous, I can’t look away. I love this poem and find myself rereading it over and over again.”
Anything You Can Find In The World You Can Find In A Body
I. In Trujillo
a man crouches
with a knife
buried under his ribs
i’m eleven and within the gash
i see glistening crimson
pearls strawberry candies removed
from a mouth’s viscous enclosure
sugar surrendering
its syrup to the sun witnessing
a pair of brown legs running
awayslowly
soaking with gravitywhile
somewhere rain muddies the ground
an unending velvet handkerchief
from a magic show
flutters because it could disappear
at any moment the squeals
of children playing tag
handscold seeking
sanctuary in a lover’s pocket
an entire oceanebbing red
with relentless dusk
II. In Milwaukee
i leave
a TV blinking
with the news another shooting
as if picking up
where it left offthe world continues to spill out
from the most recent body’s side
older nowi know how to be
afraid get angry at the trade: metal
for possibilityget chrysanthemums
and watch them wither
i keep trying
to turn my mourning into
something
meaningful
though the body bleeding out
today is the body
bleeding
out tomorrowi realize
hope feels more
like suffering
to not become the doe
which stays frozenin place
replacing its fear
with angels
mesmerized by the bright
headlightsdescending
to crush it
Ae Hee Lee
Born in South Korea, raised in Peru, Ae Hee Lee currently live in the United States. Lee hold a MFA from the University of Notre Dame, where she was awarded an Academy of American Poets Prize, and a PhD in Literature and Creative Writing from the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee. She is the author of the poetry chapbooks: Dear bear, (Platypus Press, 2021), Bedtime || Riverbed (Compound Press, 2017), and Connotary, which was selected as the winner for the 2021 Frost Place Chapbook Competition. My poetry has been published or is forthcoming at Poetry Northwest, The Georgia Review, New England Review, and Southern Review, among others.
