Taemong

Kimberly McAfee

After Li-Young Lee*

My mother had a dream of me,

when she and I were one.

She dreamed of a snake

coiled on her belly.

It was her taemong, her conception dream, of me.

How Adam and Eve were so deceived!

A wily snake, the fruit of the tree of knowledge.

Introducing suffering on this earth.

A snake condemned to writhe about the world on its belly.

I was strange when I was young;

a half-Korean girl in a place with no other Asians or mixed people.

How the other children were so deceived!

I was no gorgon!

I was a human child — just like them.

I once had a dream,

where I warred against an amphisbaena.

One of its heads was bigger than the other,

and I managed to avoid the larger head’s bites, and crushed it with a rake into the earth.

The victory was short-lived,

as the smaller head bit me with vengeance.

I then killed the monster,

but was horribly injured in the process.

The great Cleopatra, ruler of Egypt,

left this world with the bite of an asp.

After I awoke from that strange dream,

successes and failures came,

the pains brought by the striking bites of life.

I became a new creature,

my skin shed to reveal my nature within:

I am a Poet.

I writhe about on my belly,

hunting for experiences,

hunting for words, to birth creations.

Satiating the hunger within.

My dream.

Could this be what the taemong foretold?

*Inspired in part by Li-Young Lee’s poem titled, Water. It is part of his debut poetry collection, The Rose.

More from Kimberly McAfee ↓

• @writerpoetkim on Instagram
• The Savior/Shadow Principle: A Self-Help Technique and Philosophy Using Archetypes is out now
• along with, The Savior and the Shadow Queen: A Fantastical Tale Told Through Sequential Poems, the poetry collection and companion work to The Savior/Shadow Principle
• This poem is published in her chapbook, AmerAsian: My Journey to Becoming Whole as a Mixed Korean-American

Mentioned in this episode:

Write After with One Poem Only

Write After is a way to encourage poets to listen and write, and use National Poetry Month to highlight how listening to poetry makes us better poets. I know I write the best when I’m surrounded by beautiful poetry–it’s part of the reason I created this podcast, and I want to encourage others to share this practice. If you want to join: Listen to a poem from the month of April on One Poem Only, then write your own in response. I will pick one for each day to read in June for a special series: One Poem After 🍎🍏 Submissions close May 15.

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