Poetry / Hannah Sanghee Park
:: Wall ::
| You must believe me | it means I made | this to tell you |
| I will keep you out | I will keep you | out of sheer will |
| I will it to stand. | Decision of division. | The widow couldn’t |
| stand the scholar, his | need to possess his | possessing need. |
| There is no thing that | will keep you out I | will lift up stone will |
| join it fast with mud | I will build of you | what is wished, and when |
| it stands my Lord will | it stand? It will stand | and when I cannot |
| bear it further | then it will be known | you will never ask |
| of me my hand you | will leave you will | never come back. |
| Out of mercy the king | killed his son, who was | mad. Who was made |
| to rule who could not | love his father more | who could not love his |
| subjects. This is the | need of desire: nothing | more than to consume. |
| And when nothing more | is left to consume | the king was at his wit’s |
| end the prince at his end | Out of mercy the king | killed his son, who was |
| dragged, struggling out | into the courtyard | no will to forgive. |
| It was July. Sun | messy over the ground | put into a rice chest |
| to be buried alive | or boiled alive. In eight | days he at last died |
| his body later moved | in the stone to soon | be a fortress. |
| I have built of you a wall | I will keep you | out of mercy. The king |
| is left to consume | of me my hand you | who could not love his |
| need of desire: nothing, | there is no thing that | I will build of you. |
| It stands, my Lord | no will to forgive. | It means I made |
| need to possess his | life in my hands | and when I cannot |
| bear it further | mud on a skirt marrying | me to the rock |
| and when nothing more | will lift up stone will | never come back |
| into the sea I will go | messy over the ground | I will keep you out |
| Father of stone and stone | you will never ask what | is wished, and when |
| and when I cannot | bear it further | Father I will |
| never come back | but you must believe me | in: I did this for you. |
:: Excerpt from Elegy ::
How horribly human
how insensate divine
The life left
when the body bided its time
Summer of savagery
Your god was divine
Sun god above
The word was divine
Torturous men
made torturous rooms
Man is a monster
His heart was divine
You couldn't decode it.
The coda's defined
So go and
divine me
divide id
from mind
Whittle at
what little
providence
divined
Now speak to me of rot.
Now tell me what ruptured in
someone who was loved
and anything divine.
From the writer
:: Account ::
These poems deal with loss—where the loss for words eventually becomes words, and perhaps from there it lessens.
Hannah Sanghee Park is the author of The Same-Different (LSU Press).