Cathy Park Hong

Stamp the earth rind down, shuck our boots &  nap on rubber cockscomb pad. Rise up &  ride in, poles poked through with hide of   kid flap from blither wind. Ride into a town of  tires stacked, a tarred prehistoric castle. A town of shacks painted kiwi green latches guano rimmed. Road’s a batter of   blood &  dust. One serf scurries off cowed &  cloaked. Linseed-eyed &  broad of  face. Hold, I say. She says oh gods once nested on our tire hills but now that tire factory flakes to tinder too. Are you here from the world above? Now come. Heal my kin. Are you here from the world above? We douse ourselves with flame retardant &  douse the town to flame. Are you here from the world above? We hear her death in flames We hear other deaths in flames Along each town we pass We rave &  rove &  gore the last oil rig hidalgo in his tin gilt throne, His ale we drink, his heart we  jar. We are from the world above, We sing &  jig but like Sisyphus, as we eye from afar, as each child crawls out their gutted hole, &  rebuild each dead town — We can never rest.

In this world hacked from marrowed dust, the half-breed assassin slays men before they breed to corps, He belts his innard song. He travels to a sapling town where sawyers hew logs to songs of plovers, and mansadors tame broncs of the blackest, lustiest blood. Soon the town blooms to terror, and fades before it booms. Ghosts weed out of bodies with their sharp imagined hands. A hobbled miner, delirious from the sun, feels the shadow of his innard song, and croaks: I’m a buck nun failure anyway. The half-breed leaves him be, rides to a town of tents wooled with alfalfa and glass-needled rain shatters the dusted tundra.

After Paul Chan Biggum Wallah, Biggum Wallah, why so glum? You in heaven, na, be happy. You are Hip Hop’s Grand Panjandrum in white foxy mink snuggly over your Bluto belly, & this fleet of white Cucci Gucci Hummers is for you, ji. Like a short-order cook slinging hash browns, you slinged so many rhymes propho-rapping you will die, now faput. Dead. Why so chee? Ayaya, you in heaven for white people. Wrong ear-sucking heaven. Heaven does stink like mothballs, bibbit & whatsit, you smell wet dog? Milksop chatty angels with their Binaca grins, twibble: “No Hennessy just seltzer, please,” before they sing your hits a capella. Shataa, Baagad Bullya, very last straw, this Angrez-propogandhi. Silly as a cricket in pubes. Biggum Wallah bringing up demands, yar. A smashation of clouds part to reveal the uretic sun and swatting away chweetie pie cupids, looms Fatmouth God, frowning like rotten turbot. But Biggita is VIP, sold records in millions tens, so God sighs, relents & the Kleenex sky melts to Op Art swirls of Cherry Coke red, burning upup white magnolias into a chain-link planet of asphalt & black cell phone towers. This more like it, sepoys, all hoosh & video girl boomba-lathis drinking lychee lassis. But where is your number 1 rap rival nemesis? Where is 2Packi?

Raised on a cozy diet of conditional love, I learned to emoji from teevee. Now I’m hounded by gripes before my time. Twisted in my genome is this thorn, and all I see are feuds, even swans got boxing gloves for heads. — Ah Ketty-San, why so mori? Maybe you need upgrade of person? History shat on every household. Cop cruisers wand their infrared along bludgeoned homes, demanding boys to spread your cheeks, lift your sac — Now, here’s an alcopop to dull that throb, hide your ugly feelings. I want to love, yes, yet afraid to love since I will be slapped, yet what’s this itch? A fire ant burning to a warring, boiling froth of lust: Slap me, harder, slap me again! — Ketty-San, so Sado Masakumi, so much Sodami Hari Kuri. I sorry.

There, garland dandelions round that idol with a corn husk face &  beard patched with rat stubble from a barber’s dust pan, parade float driven by a carriage pulled by a pig. Two sticks knotted together, cake frost on that crude wood to make it gilt. There, spider cranks &  iron gyres, blueberry stain glass sprout like wings from coal burn cars, a trumpet toots the sorrow of another boy dead, there he is, limp on a gurney wrapped in gingham scrap, there, he’s blast. There, roofless houses, sarong utopias balloon, balloon toward the sky, while women beat, beat their skulls. I trail behind, mop in hand, sloshing scum water over memorials. There he stares at my tic-torn cankered face, &  begs for alms, his face horse rudder red. A son, he huffs, it is a son I want. I spit into them corned mitt hands.

A Kansan plays cards, calls Marshall a crawdad, that barb lands that rascal a slap; that Kansan jackass scats, camps back at caballada ranch. Hangs kack, ax, and camp hat. Kansan’s nag mad and rants can’t bask, can’t bacchanal and garland a lass, can’t at last brag can crack Law’s balls, Kansan’s cantata rang at that ramada ranch, Mañana, Kansan snarls, I’ll have an armada and thwart Law’s brawn, slam Law a damn mass war path. Marshall’s a marksman, maps Kansan’s track, calm as a shaman, sharp as a hawk, Says: That dastard Kansan’s had and gnaws lamb fatback. At dawn, Marshall stalks that ranch, packs a gat and blasts Kansan’s ass and Kansan gasps, blasts back. A flag flaps at half-mast.

blowfish arranged on a saucer. Russian roulette. angelic slivers. ginseng. cut antlers allotted in bags dogs on a spit, a Dutch girl winking holds a bowl of shellfish. white cloth, drunkenness. a different language leaks out— the idea of throat, an orifice, a cord— you say it turns you on when I speak Korean. The gold paste of afterbirth, no red— Household phrases —pae-go-p’a(I am hungry)