밤 (v) to give death (n) chestnut, night

I clung to my grandfather’s back
like a beetle on a sesame leaf
every time he leapt over chasms
to take me mountain raspberry hunting.

He hit trees with a long wooden rod
and chestnuts fell from the sky.
His palms broke the spindly shields
when knives couldn’t split the burr.

Once, we picked out the prettiest chicken
and the strangled squawks bubbled
into the best chicken porridge I’ve ever had.
A trellis of  buzzing fly paper always smacked

his forehead and he never flinched. Tombstones
line the terraced hills next to fields of soybeans
and tobacco. Is there no magic from my mouth
when I say that my grandfather is dead—

that I still don’t really care? My mouth
dressed in fried breadcrumbs, like the fish
on the table—a low ah escaping my lips
curling over my teeth to say  밤.