From Hardly War

"Race=Nation"

     I was born in a tiny traditional tile-roofed house, a house my father bought with award money he received for his photographs of the April 19, 1960 Revolution. The student-led revolution overthrew the authoritarian South Korean president, Syngman Rhee, installed by the U.S. government in 1948. He tells me even elementary school students came out to join high school and college students in protest, their arms locked shoulder to shoulder. And what he cannot forget are the shoeshine boys, Korean War orphans who eked out a living on the streets of Seoul. Many of them gave up their lives in the uprising. Police opened fire, killing about 180 and wounding thousands. We bade farewell to the house I was born in during the height of the U.S.-backed dictatorship under Park Chung Hee. Even after several decades of living outside of South Korea, this is the house I still return to. It is my psychic and linguistic base, a site of perpetual farewell and return, a site of my political act—translation and writing.
     My early education in South Korea trained me to think race as nation and nation as race, hence race=nation. A Korean term, uri minjok—our race, our national identity—was imagined, a crucial construction and a mobilizing force in the anti-colonial, independence movement during the Japanese occupation 1910-45. When Korea fell under the control of the U.S. military government in 1945, a part of our race had split off as ppalgaengi, Reds or Commies. But really, anyone in “those white pajama things,” traditional pants, which majority of the Koreans wore back then, was seen as a gook. This is how a gook=nation was born. Our race, our national identity, even our clothing became racialized and geopoliticized within the global class war. Therefore, when I was born in the tiny tile-roofed house, I was already geopolitically raced. Hence, me=gook.
     While I was growing up in Hong Kong, I saw more of my father’s photographs than of my father because he was always away in various war zones. He would bring back photographs of the war he saw, then leave again. He also left us a map, a wall-sized map of Southeast Asia, framed and hung above our dining table, so we could track him across Vietnam, Cambodia, and Laos. What I am attempting to do with my poems and my father’s photographs is what I used to do as a child when I stared at my father’s photographs and maps—trying to imagine race=nation, its language, its wars. I am trying to fold race into geopolitics and geopolitics into poetry. Hence, geopolitical poetics. It involves disobeying history, severing its ties to power. It strings together the faintly remembered, the faintly imagined, the faintly discarded, which is to say race=nation gets to speak its own faint history in its own faint language. Its mere umbilical cord is hardly attached to anything at all. Hence, hardly=war.

"Woe are you?"

It was hardly war, the hardliest of wars. Hardly, hardly. It occurred to me that this particular war was hardly war because of kids, more kids, those poor kids. The kids were hungry until we GIs fed them. We dusted them with DDT. Hardly done. Rehabilitation of Korea that is. It needs chemical fertilizer from the states, power to build things like a country. In the end it was the hardliest of wars made up of bubble gum, which GIs had to show those kids how to chew. In no circumstance can man be comfortable without art. They don’t want everlasting charity and we are not giving it to them. We are just lending them a hand until they can stand on their own two feet. A novel idea. This is why it occurred to me that this particular war was hardly war, the hardliest of wars.

My father was hardly himself during the war, then I was born during the era that hardly existed, and, therefore, I hardly existed without DDT. Beauty is pleasure regarded as the quality of a thing. I prefer a paper closet with real paper dresses in it. To be born hardly, hardly after the hardliest of wars is a matter of debate. Still going forward. We are that is. Napalm again. This is the THE BIG PICTURE. War and its masses. War and its men. War and its machines. Together we form THE BIG PICTURE. From Korea to Germany from Alaska to Puerto Rico. All over the world, the U.S. Army is on the alert to defend our country, you the people against aggression. This is THE BIG PICTURE, an official television report to the nation from the Army. This is Korea! Is one thing better than another? These South Koreans are alright. Woe is you, woe is war, hardly war, woe is me, woe are you? My father is still alive and this is how I came to prefer a paper closet with real paper dresses in it.

from Purely Illustrative

"I, Lack-a-daisy"

I, Lack-a-daisy, born two miles from here. Here is DMZ. In fact, I, Lack-a-daisy, born two miles from every place you’ve been. How orange – yes, ma’am. I, Lack-a-daisy, born two miles from every place you’ve been, which is known as the human core, which translates to born two miles from every flowering bellybutton. Here is DMZ. Mark-a-daisy. Every belly is a suspect. I, Lack-a-daisy, born two miles from every place, every suspect, every petal kicked open, am deeply moved by world memories. There is no choice in the matter. What are world memories? It turns out that they are war memories. And what are war memories? They are orphan memories. Orphan memories are like the fetuses thrown out in bottles. Fishy smelling blood clots. I, Lack-a-daisy, never saw the fetus-filled bottles with my own eyes, but when you are a little girl, what you hear is as good as seeing with your very own eyes. Here is DMZ. We talk about blood at great length. Fetuses captivate our imagination, particularly orphan fetuses. After all, I, myself, was nearly an orphan fetus. Luckily, I happily survived. I, Lack-a-daisy, thank orphan memories. I’m bloody fetal. I’m purely petal. I’m hardly war. Now, ask me a difficult question. How orange – yes, ma’am. He’s my son.

"Daisy Serenade"

1      I, Lack-a-daisy=like a daisy=lack a daisy=like a daisy=I, Lack-a-daisy
2     Nine nine=mind your daisy=9 9=paisley daisy
3      Motherly stamen=style style=overly ovaries!
4      O fear veer=you are my Schneewittchen
5      Or 0?=Do you know?=O or 5?=Do you know?=Yi Sang knows
7      I style stigma=style anther=then sepal ovule=Over
6      I sang=I sang=like a daisy
6      I fugue=I fugue=like a daisy
8      I nearly=narrowly=ovary=Over
9      Paisley Daisy
9      Oopsy Daisy
10      Or Lyndon?
9      Or Barry?
8      Or Crazy?
7      Oxeye Daisy?
6      Or I Sang?
5      Or London?
4      Or Yoke?
3      Or Vote?
2      Or 18?
1      Overly Overly
0      We must love one another or die

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