Taemong by Kimberly McAfee

One Poem Only · Sep 30, 2025 · 2m

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…