Misha Penton
BAYOU ROAD
His hair is long and black and wavy like mine. He pushes the old push mower, its blades spin and cut and slice. He explodes into blue fire and red electric guitars—filaments of plasma rocket and dissolve into the lawn. Everything is still. Everything is quiet. It is hot. I dig a tiny hole with my tiny hands and bury a tiny acorn. A sprout peeks through sweet fresh cut grass and swishes up! up! up! into massive being—leaves reach high! high! high! to sky. His trunk is rough and wide and smells like earth and stars. I hug him with my whispers and small sticky licorice arms. We sing songs about moon rabbits and rain. Between his splayed feet-roots, a little door opens—we leave a book at the fairy’s threshold: pages glow with crayon glyphs and the spine is sutured with red ribbons. I sit with my back against his trunk. A giant fuzzy black caterpillar inches up my inner thigh, its fanged mouth agape. The sting swallows me whole.
DAEGU
Noodles and seaweeds and cabbages buried in spicy ceramic pots. I eat tiny dried fish from big plastic bags. Savory. Salty. I am on a train with Ajima (where are we going?)—we sit together on a wood bench. Crouched mountains blur by outside the open window, and I chew on a flat dried octopus. Savory. Salty. A street vendor’s cart is piled high with sparkling copper mounds that smell sweet and roasted. He curls a broadsheet into a cone and scoops the toasted gems into it. On tippytoe, I peek over the edge of the coiled paper (the little nuggets are bugs!) —beondegi, the glistening bronze pupae of silkworms. My mother refuses to let me eat them. Somewhere in the distant countryside, women dye long swaths of silk in a river of indigo and safflower blossoms. On the corner, an old man stoops over a griddle. He pours creamy batter onto its hot surface and with a big metal stamp. He stamps the oozing batter into an impossibly thin wafer of caramelized sugar. I buy pencil boxes with saucer-eyed fantastical characters printed on the covers and little wrapped rectangles of gum in every fruity flavor and I grab big hanging disk-sweets from street-side kiosks. We run through winding alleys. We are spies.
THE MARKET
A million dirt paths slither away in every direction—a labyrinth of open-air shops, kiosks, and vendors—everything is piled so high!—fabrics and trinkets and bibbles and bobbles and booples and stuffed animals with no stuffing and pots and pans and hibachis and figurines and beads and bangles and stainless steel chopsticks and cups and teapots and plates and socks and flip-flops and bowls and baskets—and everyone is touching my long dark hair: Stop it! We climb into a platformed shop. Beautiful intricate fabrics line the high walls—reds and blues and purples and emeralds threaded with gold and bronze and silver—embroidered flowers and mountains and trees and clouds shimmer with dragons and magical glyphs. A lady takes my measurements for a traditional dress. She makes my favorite one: a gauzy white knee-length hanbok with little bloomer-like pants. Dark blue three-dimensional blossoms sprout from the bodice. I love it. I spin and spin and spin!—the edge of my skirt swirls and floats above the curved horizon and my ringlets lariat constellations: I vanish into the dark threshold of outer space.
Misha Penton is a multidisciplinary artist whose work spans music, performance, video, poetry, and prose. Her texts often become lyrics and libretti for her own vocal compositions and collaborations. Her writing has appeared in The Future Fire, The Wild Word, Corvid Queen, About Place Journal, and Abyss & Apex Magazine. Her poem “Under the Boards” was a 2020 Pushcart Prize nominee. She holds a Ph.D in music and performance from Bath Spa University, UK. mishapenton.com
