First published in Korean in Hwanghae Review, vol. 121
According to Carson, who has the English name of Jesus’s maternal grandmother, Anna,

‘To be a whacher  is not a choice.

There is nowhere to get away from it,

no ledge to climb up to.’
Anna was married three times,

and Maria was born to her and her first husband, Joachim.

She broke free from her biological father and two stepfathers,

and got pregnant before making love with Joseph.
Ever since I found out

that one of my Twitter friend’s

friends was an incest survivor,

I wanted to dedicate

a prayer poem

to the angel who always covered Mary’s naked body with her soft white wings.
Beginning with all the things that happened that I didn’t witness,

from the things that happened secretly without catching my eye—thank you, thanks!

With my eyes, I wanted to run away quietly,
because prayer is often like that.

Wrapping the seeds of despair in your warm hands

and desperately hoping that they will never sprout.



 The term whacher is a quote from Anne Carson’s ‘The Glass Essay’. ↩