don mee choi

1.
The neocolonizers will soon perish. A farce is a farce, but the bombs fall anyway. Craters are formed and war correspondents travel in moonlight. The impression of traveling on the moon is born. Blood flows beneath ash. Dummies drop from the sky. A farce is a farce, B-29s never land. No mention is made of imperialism as a logical phase of capitalism. An old peasant stays behind to save his house, his son’s legacy—his written Chinese in ink and brush. He loses himself in the crooked ditches of his rice paddies, misses his footing. An aerial view reveals that he’s a gook in white pajamas, normal for the daytime.
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3.
The extent of loss is unknown. The text has been lost beyond the cuts. Father’s documents have been rolled, tied together in string I made from hemp in winter under a lit pine nut oil. Grandfather carefully wrapped the documents in cloth and buried them under the house. Has Human Nature gone – unknowing of his dread abode – Fragments of my journey to the end of a nation. I arrived alone in a white top and long skirt with a sack, wearing thinly padded cotton socks and pointed rubber shoes. A normal view shows gooks’ women fluttering about. Some had children on their backs. I was never taught to read as a girl. A normal document is not rolled but folded in half, then scissored. The cuts are jagged or straight. I will teach my daughters how to read the extent of the end.

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Don Mee Choi lives in Seattle. Her poems have recently appeared in Action Yes, Cipher, Fairy Tale Review, La Petite Zine, and Tinfish. Her translations include: When the Plug Gets Unplugged, a chapbook (Tinfish Press, 2005), Anxiety of Words: Contemporary Poetry by Korean Women (Zephyr Press, 2006), and Mommy Must be a Fountain of Feather (Action Books), forthcoming in January, 2008.