Home = Gutter

Stine An

Home = Gutter by Stine An B-Dragon dreams of home. Home is a gutter. Before we translate the Korean idiom 개천에서 용 난다 [gaecheoneseo yong nanda] into English, home is but a fill-in-the-blank. From a/the A a/the dragon B. FILL-IN-THE-BLANK WORD BANK: A. brook trench stream conduit creek spout channel gutter valley A sewer furrow ditch place water makes a run for it place water takes a piss place water makes way B. is born is grown is sprouted is manufactured is printed opens takes flight occurs happens hatches becomes an idiom becomes known via rumor becomes a product of becomes a rags to riches story rises above To and for B-Dragon, home is an idiom.

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Stine An

Stine An is a poet, literary translator, and performer based in Queens. Her work has appeared in FENCE, Best American Experimental Writing 2018, Best Literary Translations 2024, Electric Literature, Black Warrior Review, World Literature Today, and elsewhere. She holds a BA in Literature from Harvard College and an MFA in Literary Arts from Brown University and is the recipient of fellowships and grants from The Poetry Project, Heim Translation Fund Grant, Yaddo, American Literary Translators Association, Vermont Studio Center, and the National Endowment for the Arts. Her interdisciplinary work explores diasporic poetics, experimental translation, and virtual performance. Her first full-length poetry translation, Today’s Morning Vocabulary by South Korean poet Yoo Heekyung, is forthcoming from Zephyr Press in 2025, and the manuscript for her debut poetry collection B-Dragon Suite won the 2023 Nightboat Poetry Prize. You can find her online @gregorspamsa.

Cover of Second Factory Issue 5

Issue 5

Brooklyn, New York

Ugly Duckling Presse

Second Factory Series Editors
Lucie Berjoan
chuck kuan
Criss Moon
Michael Newton
Lee Norton
Paige Parsons
Serena Solin

Second Factory showcases work from a variety of poets and artists in each issue. Spotted like a bird in the wild, heard as a grinding piece of machinery, Second Factory manifests in examples: an office park of shadows; a vast and boundless shed; a grape in the risograph; a butterfly in a net.

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