Halmuni has never been to the dentist but 
at 87 she still cracks crabs in one bite,
halves legs with her front teeth and
plops pink flesh onto my plate         at the dinner table,

I never speak Korean, flakes of shell
red crunch and strewn about the tablecloth,
her children are American now and 
at the nursing home,

no one speaks Korean          Halmuni says it’s
drained her blood         all white inside, she only eats American 
now is the spryest she’s ever looked          the other day
nurse didn’t help her to the bathroom because 

nurse doesn’t know the word for 화장실          of course,
Halmuni cracked two ribs, healed in a day,
skin sprung taut, her cheeks undropped
and everyday, she asks when she will finally

before, no one lived to 60.

a reader with good reviews on Google describes my lifeline as
very long and a messy palm and that right now

my energy reads grey-blue anxious and depressed, but 
this will persist through my very long life

I laugh, because this is a bummer, it really is
a myth, teenage

angst will persist, when I arrive home
Umma is splayed on her bed

pale without a blanket,
crab meat on a plate, a tender and 

useless thing, a long life
stringing on her sheets     she tells me

she is 60 years old, so in the last three days
she’s eaten nothing but burnt rice and barley tea

she wants to jump from somewhere 
very high, but we only live 

on the second floor          her teeth are short and brittle 
three root canals in the last year

I touch her belly, soft and cool
despite golden hour still

streaming on her skin
her stomach rumbles,

she couldn’t plan this far ahead

Published October 3rd, 2021

Mina Khan writes into the confusion of violence and tenderness. A first-gen Pakistani-Korean American, their work nests between nations, generations. They are the author of the chapbook, Mon— monuments, monarchs & monsters (Sputnik & Fizzle 2020), and are published or forthcoming in the the Margins, the Berkeley Poetry Review, Prelude, Lammergeier, and more. They are a current MFA Candidate at Columbia University.

Korean-born artist Jae Ko grew up in Tokyo, and she is now based in Washington, D.C. Ko attended Tokyo Art School, received a BFA from Wako University in Tokyo, and an MFA from the Maryland Institute College of Art (MICA). Ko has held solo exhibitions all over the world, including the Beijing Times Art Museum, Museum of Contemporary Art Chengdu, Powerlong Art Museum in Shanghai, Galerie Roger Katwijk in Amsterdam, Galerie Bernd A. Lausberg in Düsseldorf, Contemporary Arts Museum Houston, C. Grimaldis Gallery in Baltimore, Marsha Mateyka Gallery in Washington D.C., and Heather Gaudio Fine Art in Connecticut. The Corcoran Gallery of Art, the DC Commission on the Arts and Humanities, Grounds for Sculpture, The Phillips Collection, and the Hirshhorn Museum & Sculpture Garden are among the permanent collections that hold Ko’s work. More of Ko's work can be found on her website, and through Heather Gaudio Fine Art.