Barrelhouse Reviews: L(eye)ght by Jessica Kim
Review by Alex Carrigan
Animal Heart Press / April 2022 / 44 pp
Editor’s note: the formatting of Kim’s poetry could not be ideally preserved in this review’s quotes.
In her new poetry chapbook L(eye)ght, Jessica Kim explores the power of the eye as it relates to the body and perceptions of identity. The 18-year-old Kim, who was named the Los Angeles Youth Poet Laureate for 2021-2022, collects a series of poems that explore her identity as a Korean-American person and as a visually impaired person. The collection highlights the maturity and wisdom Kim has already developed as she explores what it really means to see and be seen.
Kim establishes her thesis quickly. The first poem, “Poem in Which I Do Not Talk About My Disability” begins a series of titles that start with “Poem in Which I…” She opens by writing about her arrival in Los Angeles: “While wearing my own / eyeglasses, I cannot differentiate sky from / / skyscrapers, museums from churches. / A refractive error.” The next poem, “Shattered,” compares her arrival to the experiences of the first Korean immigrants in America, while the following poem, “Braillet,” (Braille + ballet) narrows the focus from the wider scope of an immigrant to that of a single person. Already, Kim has demonstrated the personal and grander perspectives that her chapbook will investigate.
It's clear that Kim’s heritage is an integral part of her identity. She refers to Korean culture without translating Korean words or explaining her references. Her poems ask the reader to live in her culture, such as in the poem “What Not to Expect at a Korean Supermarket.” Kim describes a supermarket that may not be too different from one a reader would expect in America, but she uses this familiar location to explore disassociation and otherness:
What can I do,
but slab the dead meat on the cashier just to look Korean
enough? All eyes turn to the repulsive deadness.
I barely have enough money from the last time I visited the country
and the coupons in my wallet have expired the year before.
The cashier plastic-wraps the fish thrice to preserve my decision
and I scurry out to the back parking lot, burning
red like chili, only to remember that I forgot to buy the jujubes.
Other poems include Korean words and items: hanbok dresses, a comparison of “Goryeo folksong” to Shakespeare, referring to family members by Korean words like “umma” or “halmeoni.”
Kim easily merges this exploration of her culture with exploration of life as a visually impaired person. As the title of the chapbook suggests, many poems deal with the interplay of light and darkness through a speaker with eyesight problems. The speaker often refers to light sources like neon lights in Seoul or flickering streetlights in Los Angeles. In “Deus Ex Machina,” Kim writes, “I attempt chiaroscuro on your palms / to erase the calluses.” The poem “Monochromacy” begins with “We’re at the movies and the scene unfolds in / Casablanca monochrome.” She adds:
Your eyes, the brightest shade of fear. I see nothing.
I leave you inside the pigmented cinematography
of your fate. You keep asking me if I can see the blood
on your palms. I don’t. You forget I am colorblind
and something inside me loves this colorless ending.
Still, while the collection may be categorized as an examination of what it means to be an immigrant or to have a disability, where Kim’s work truly succeeds is in demonstrating how to live. It’s about accepting the parts of one’s identity that can’t be controlled and learning to accept and focus on a bigger life. The final poem of the collection, “Poem in Which My Disability Talks About Me,” brings everything full circle:
I have never made eye contact before,
not even with my disability.
Not even with myself,
my pixelated face blurring away the cracks on my glasses.
I am not guilty of forgetting;
I’m just learning to see myself in a mirror.
Learning to love my disability.
However, Kim’s writing indicates that making this kind of eye contact is a gradual process. This concluding assertion reflects the maturity and wisdom of the collection as a whole. Kim adds comforting lines to show the path set before her:
Someday, I will learn to praise my eyes
the way my disability idolizes me.
Someday, I will tell my disability
I’d want to keep her in my next life.
L(eye)ght is an incredible debut that speaks of lived and learned experiences far beyond those one would expect from the author’s age. Kim invites the reader to see through her eyes and to participate instead of merely observe. It’s full of remarkable detail and language that could enrobe anyone, as long as they’re willing to allow Jessica Kim to drape them in it.
Alex Carrigan (he/him) is an editor, poet, and critic from Virginia. He is the author of May All Our Pain Be Champagne: A Collection of Real Housewives Twitter Poetry (Alien Buddha Press, 2022). He has had fiction, poetry, and literary reviews published in Quail Bell Magazine, Lambda Literary Review, Empty Mirror, Gertrude Press, Quarterly West, Barrelhouse, Stories About Penises (Guts Publishing, 2019), Closet Cases: Queers on What We Wear (Et Alia Press, 2020), and more. He is also the co-editor of Please Welcome to the Stage...: A Drag Literary Anthology with House of Lobsters Literary. For more information, visit https://carriganak.wordpress.com/ or follow him on Twitter @carriganak.