Gu-Banpo by Christine Shin (Virginia)

She arrives in Gu-Banpo after six months to find the lights        
Off on all three floors, red X marks, and “Vacant” stickers        
Clambered across every store–a leech sucking the life of         
The Barren Street                            
That she passes by for one last time, trying to explore.        

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Signs plaster the alleyways, giving eviction notices            
And no longer do the chatters of halmoni’s and students         
Chime through the night, not a person in sight.             
The only sound comes from the cicadas who hiss from         
The Abandoned Street.                            

Once full of her favorite tteok-bokki shop,                
The small store she got her first perm,                 
The mungujeom she searched for cute                 
Stationary to gift to her friends,                    
And her grandmother’s house    of twenty years.             

All forced to leave the community they have                 
Come to love. All forced to leave the                     
Places they have made                         
Their homes.