Every Year Tangerines Grow
Seogwipo, Republic of Korea
2025, Senior, Poetry & Spoken Word
Every year, when the warm draft moves north,
I fly back to the island where the salty sea smell
and sweet tangerine rush through my nose.
I fly back to the town
I hear that the volcano gifted them with endless rocks
They dig up to make farmland and walls
Villagers build rock walls shorter than them
to protect the vegetables from the wind.
I fly back to the girl
By the door lay pieces of tangerine
She peels them with her small hands
My heart knows that they are for me.
She always watches from behind the tree, far away
Until I pick up the tangerine
She would laugh as I peck the sweet fruit with my beak.
I glide through the trees, mountains, hills, and rivers until I reach the village
The tangerine trees had fallen.
Odd, because tangerine trees always stand firm.
And when I returned to the town,
Everything had changed since I left.
People whisper to each other
About the police suppression of the Northwest Youth Association
about Korea’s election and the separation of the government
Many people fought against police with guns, knives,
And many people died due to indiscriminate violence
The government destroyed countless towns
Leaving no place to go back for the people who survived
The village I go back to every year
Has already been destroyed like any other town.
Houses flattened to mounds and rubble,
broken pieces of wood from the wagons,
pieces of pottery,
the hay stalks
lying on the ground,
smoke rising between the tangerine trees that fell,
Piles of golden tangerine — squished
With bitter smell instead of sweet,
leaving only the rock walls standing.
The girl was gone
Everyone was gone
like nothing existed in the first place.
Near the town people gathered around
There was the girl — one less arm
She saw me, and I saw her
She would not smile like before,
Before everything fell down
There are no more tangerines,
No more door to put tangerine pieces
No more trees for her to hide
No more small hands of hers peeling tangerines for me.
Sobbing sounds of people faded
Village people started to gather wood, hay, rocks,
anything they could find.
Houses stood up again
Clay pots, hay stacks, appeared again one by one
Sometimes I saw some people crying by the rock wall
But they would go back again, and continue their work.
The girl had a home now
She would snoop around the fallen tangerine trees
Where all the sticky mashed tangerines lay
She would crouch down and with her single bare hand
dig a hole in the ground, bury the tangerine that is unrecognizable
And add soil until it becomes flat.
Even after she sobbed by the rock wall,
She would plant tangerines everyday.
As each summer goes by
As the tangerine trees sprout
As the houses become taller than the rock walls
As I hear laughter from the girl
The town started to resemble what I’ve always remembered as my home
The girl would pick the tangerine from the trees
She would peel it with her hand
And hide back at the tree, waiting for me to pick it up.
After the harsh winter
I always go back to the island with salty smell of the sea and
sweet bright orange tangerine smell that rushes into my nose.
Reflection
Around when I was working on the poem, I coincidentally studied at school about the April 3rd Massacre that occurred in Jeju in 1948. It inspired me to write a poem about this incident because I realized that people around the world would not know about how the government indiscriminately killed Jeju residents and destroyed wildlife on the island. Many people have struggled to survive, but eventually recovered their daily lives. I didn’t know this island had been through that kind of destruction before I learned about it in school. I wanted to share my insights with a wider audience. So, I decided to write a poem about my home Jeju to spread awareness about this incident and people’s resilience. My message to the viewers of my poem is that resilience can be represented by everything around us that has started a long time ago that has been building up until today. Human violence not only destroys each other, but also nature, ecosystems, and communities.