Near Death (Experienced Applicants Only) Please Address the Selection Criteria

Have you used Viagra in the past 24 hours the paramedic asks slightly embarrassed I answer No but is there a box for I wish I had a reason to you can tick while something won’t dissolve under my tongue if death comes here more than an hour to the nearest hospital strapped down how … Continue reading Near Death (Experienced Applicants Only) Please Address the Selection Criteria

Boldrewood Parade

I think I finally see clearly out of those trespassed estate streets where the sounds of looking are dusted over by unmade roads like some early Drysdale, a veteran’s emphysema in a backyard shed skew whiff late afternoon shadows stretched children playing cricket the warty rabbitoh with all his skinned specials, next door’s son dying … Continue reading Boldrewood Parade

The I Know a Dead Mountaineer Society, Concedes : A new poem up at Bluepepper

The cherry wood honour roll burns air gasping for lettering a toast for scalers who bathed at the source of the Ganges just so they could divine is Atman Brahman an answer reaching for those beads of months without footing while Bach parades Air on a G String amid foothills of ever decreasing amplitude the … Continue reading The I Know a Dead Mountaineer Society, Concedes : A new poem up at Bluepepper

The War Still Within: Poems of the Korean Diaspora by Tanya Ko Hong

Tanya Ko Hong’s poetry of the horrors of the comfort women, and how it continues. Disturbing, compelling, not to be missed. Deep and wonderful review by Charles Rammelkamp in North of Oxford.

North of Oxford

the war
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By Charles Rammelkamp
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Tanya Ko Hong’s heartbreaking collection of poems is all about bearing witness and the need to testify to a truth against all the forces of silence from both without and within that try to suppress its expression. This truth is all about treachery and betrayal. Interestingly, it is in the very last stanza of the final poem in the book, “At Tara Station in Dublin,” where we find an invitation to speak.  The speaker in the poem finds herself stranded in an Irish pub drinking coffee when she is approached by a “sweet-looking girl” who asks,
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not in Gaelic but in fluent English:
“Love! I am a hungry angel of the street.
Get me a McDonald’s hamburger and a cup of coffee,
and tell me a story of your star,
the land where you came from, please.”
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All the poems that precede this one are the story…

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