Yŏlsa 열사 (Martyr)
Halmoni is no longer a communist
if i trace the vertebrae of your back
smooth white stones at your door in Pohang
I’ll see the same spine like mine
at least a quarter— like mine.
if I was your surgeon
I would make you feel no pain
if I was a poet
I would write you love poems,
be the part of your neck that
connects you to your back,
holding the weight of your spine,
making that weight known
I wish that was enough
but I want you to be free,
and I want revenge.
f
Halmoni is a communist
she runs to the prison every morning
she drowns the national security law
she floods the prison gates
she is no longer hungry
no longer in a rush
there is no need
for martyrs
her father isn’t one
she believes in love again
my heart begins to heal
she bombs the us military base
she kills every last soldier
she sets them all free
Every last one
of them
their families cry at great big funerals
but they live better lives
they understand
their lives, are worthy
of humanity and forgiveness
too
f
f
f
my kids aren’t afraid to go to prison
my kids are communists
the feds don’t knock on their door
for wanting to defect to
the north
south and west
are the new phantoms
Halmoni burns the prison
and writes on her seeds the stories
Koreans have been killed in mass for telling
a free library blooms
inside the entrance
its mural reads
“I would rather Korea be one or nothing at all”
f
f
f
f
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“If you look at a picture from
the sky of the Korean Peninsula at
night South Korea is filled with
lights and energy and vitality
and a booming economy;
North Korea is dark.”
US Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, 2002
f
“If you look at a picture from
the sky of the Korean Peninsula at
night South Korea is filled with
lights and energy and vitality
and a booming economy;
North Korea is dark.”
f
“If you look at a picture from
the sky of the Korean Peninsula at
night South Korea is filled with
lights and energy and vitality
and a booming economy;
North Korea is dark.”
f
“If you look at a picture from
the sky of the Korean Peninsula at
night South Korea is filled with
lights and energy and vitality
and a booming economy;
North Korea is dark.”
f
“I saw an American soldier and begged for mercy. I shouted to him that we were not bad people, not communists. But he shot at us again. A bullet ripped through my waist and hit my son’s chest. I lay there still, my mind blank. Two soldiers came over, a fat one and a tall one. They looked down at us and talked to each other. Later more soldiers came and they wrapped my son in a white bag and buried him. They took me to an ambulance. That day, I saw the two faces of America.”
Park Sun-Young, victim of No Gun Ri Massacre
f
“The Americans played with our lives like boys playing with flies.”
f
us secretary of defense
donald rumsfeld
a korea genocided into
two, one dark, and one light
by the us military
no one believed it was a genocide
until a us general said
that they “burned every town in northern korea”
that they “killed what? 20% of the population?”
that they bombed
f
Afghanistan 1998, 2001-
Bosnia 1994, 1995
Cambodia 1969-70
China 1945-46
Congo 1964
Cuba 1959-1961
El Salvador 1980s
Guatemala 1954, 1960, 1967-69
Indonesia 1958 Laos 1964-73
Grenada 1983
Iraq 1991-2000s, 2015-
Iran 1987, 2025
Korea 1950-53
Kuwait 1991
Lebanon 1983, 1984
Libya 1986, 2011-
Nicaragua 1980s
Pakistan 2003, 2006-
Palestine 2010-
Panama 1989
Peru 1965
Somalia 1993, 2007-08, 2010-
Sudan 1998
Syria 2014-
Vietnam 1961-73
Yemen 2002, 2009-
Yugoslavia 1999
f
and firebombed every building
and killed 20% of the population
committed 200 massacres
deployed millions of tons of biological and chemical bombs
f
I’m so sorry i wasn’t there, i wish i could bend time to bring you back. I would do anything to have you back.
f
but the truth is in my friends’ smiles
their ears, noses, eyes
it lives in the things we can’t hide
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