Fresh off the Boat ⎜ An Iconography
i.
Tongue unfurls in ruins, low
& guarded as if each syllable unsheathes
a fresh wound. Severed: foreign bodies
clutch foreign limbs. No place
for proper burials, only
tacit uprisings.
ii.
Wander through deluge / shield / from
gusts of windsong / shingled eaves
rise / dreams are
not yours to be / shared
legacy of no/bodies
iii.
Heft hems craving, atrophies
into opal bone fields where
spring's bounty bursts unshut
to expose new realms.
There's no place like home
There's no place like home
There's no place like home
There's no one place
unmoored: tears glint
like oceans among the weeds.
In winter, sleet melds into
mammoth banks sighing loss.
iv.
v.
Family trees reduced
to oral
traditions, cauterized dead
ends of dendrite filigree:
personalities
of myth, disintegrating
like vapor, apparitions
that whisper: Don't you dare
forget
me. Don't forget.
vi.
Wilderness: oh how
it bewilders! Head west
toward the wilting
sun—cardinal
vanishing point.
In darkness,
children morph
into beasts rabid
from diets of artificial
commodities. Trade origin
for sugar: they forget
their given names.
vii.
Ballet of looped
(y)earnings: mirrored
Wall: begin
& end: end
& begin: begin & end:
&&&
Feature Date
- March 7, 2020
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From Bodega by Su Hwang (Minneapolis: Milkweed Editions, 2019).
Copyright © 2019 by Su Hwang.
Reprinted with permission from Milkweed Editions.
Su Hwang is a poet, activist, and the author of Bodega (Milkweed Editions, 2019). Born in Seoul, Korea, she was raised in New York then called the Bay Area home before transplanting to the Midwest. A recipient of the inaugural Jerome Hill Fellowship in Literature, she teaches creative writing with the Minnesota Prison Writing Workshop and is the cofounder, with poet-educator-healer Sun Yung Shin, of Poetry Asylum. Su currently lives in Minneapolis.
"These poems feel right on time."
―Boston Globe
"In Su Hwang's intricate debut, the bodega is a vantage point for 'taking stock of these terrible/ hierarchies' of race, privilege and immigration . . . She asks readers to hear rather than understand 'the gibberish/ of anguish' spilling from dislocation and trauma."
―Minneapolis Star Tribune
"These poems demand to be sounded-out and savored . . . the narrative eye and ear is gentle, encompassing, hypnotic."
―The Millions
"In this formally dexterous debut, Hwang interrogates language, identity, and cultural inheritance . . . This work succeeds in using the nuances of poetic technique to amplify an already powerful message of cultural identity."
―Publishers Weekly
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