Esther Ra

Laundry

When she received her first laundry machine,
a wonder of torqued water & whiplashed soap,
she cried. I thought I was dreaming, she said. I mean,
my very own laundry machine? She remembers her years
in North Korea, a young mother, dunking a soup of thick rags
in cleft ice. Pounding dirt from worn folds of colorless
cloth, dirt blooming beneath the swift water.
A slab of smooth stone for the beating. Fingers red
and gnawed senseless with cold. This
was her language for courage,
when all softness was thrashed from her skin:
death’s chattering teeth beneath her feet,
all feeling drained out of her hands—
& still raising a fistful of stone to the sky,
still swinging at what could be cleansed.

Esther Ra is a bilingual writer and illustrator from Seoul. She is the author of ‘book of untranslatable things’ (Grayson Books, 2018) and the founding editor of The Underwater Railroad, a literary reunification project. Her work has also been published in Boulevard, Rattle, Twyckenham Notes, The Rumpus, Bellingham Review, The Korea Times, and Border Crossing, among others. She has been the recipient of numerous awards, including the Pushcart Prize and the 49th Parallel Award. In writing, as in life, Esther is deeply interested in the quiet beauty of the ordinary.