A pink house and a bunch of rambutans

  Det blir en kombination av webbmagasin och Asien-tematik i dagens inlägg. Jag hade utlovat att sista besöket i Hong Kong skulle ske genom den asiatiska tidskriften Cha. Men samtidigt har jag dåligt samvete över min halva sågning av Sarah Howe, tidigare i år. Så rubriken London-Hong Kong får en Sarah-epilog imorgon. Årets sista Utblick postas på söndag.

  I Lucka 14 hittar ni Joar Tiberg. Han föddes 1967 och är uppvuxen i Oxelösund och Luleå. Numera bor han i Stockholm. Tiberg debuterade 1995 och har utgivit ett tjugotal böcker i olika genrer. 2010 utkom diktboken Ansvaret Ansvaret Ansvaret Ansvaret och 2013 kom Tung trafik och lilla vägen. 2016 utger Joar Tiberg Atts jord. Hans dikter har översatts till danska, franska, norska, kinesiska och japanska, och även tonsatts av den norske tonsättaren Frode Haltli. Källa: Albert Bonniers förlag

***

  Jag börjar med att återge tidskriftens historiska bakgrund:

"Cha, founded in 2007, a decade after the handover, is the first Hong Kong-based English online literary journal; it is dedicated to publishing quality poetry, fiction, creative non-fiction, reviews and photography & art. Cha has a strong focus on Asian-themed creative work and work done by Asian writers and artists. It also publishes established and emerging writers/artists from around the world.

  The journal had a launch in Beijing on 31 August 2009 by Royston Tester. The March 2013 issue was launched on 7 March by guest editors Kaitlin Solimine (prose) and Marc Vincenz (poetry). The event was co-hosted by the Fairbank Center for Chinese Studies at Harvard University."

*

  Cha är verkligen ett öppet webbmagasin, till skillnad mot flera av de kandidater som var påtänkta för onsdagsrubriken. Jag har studerat deras senaste utgåvor men också tittat i deras kompletta!! arkiv. Jag fascinerades av en dikt, vars text andas Japan (ej Hong Kong), och som är skriven av en författare bosatt i Canada. När jag läser hennes text får jag surrealistiska bilder i huvudet.

Nagoya Castle

A Samurai's Pink House, by Sonia Saikaley

(Published in Cha: An Asian Literary Journal. November, 2011.)

In a shroud of blackness, I peer out my window

across the road, a pink house stands abandoned. 

 

Shadows stir behind broken shutters

I wonder if it is a samurai ghost,

 

a seppuku victim still oozing blood turned pink

stucco cracked with battlefield or earthquake scars

 

along my own belly remind me of

the child whispering sensei behind a plum tree

 

a slice of pale orange fruit in her small hands

I almost wept thinking of the youngster

 

lost in my diseased womb, cut out years ago

a flash across the way, I imagine the samurai's sword

 

over belly flesh, in the lonely house

slivers of moonlight shimmer on the moving blade

***

  Även nästa diktexempel är svårtolkat, och jag har fullständigt absorberats av de fyra textraderna:

My memory a plot of land

I plant my secrets

So some may later blossom

Words traceable to their seeds

  Andrea Lingenfelter är en poet, översättare och forskare på kinesisk litteratur. Hennes översättningar inkluderar The Kite Family (2015), en samling av surrealistisk kortprosa av Hong Kong-författaren Hon Lai Chu. Andrea Lingenfelter bor i San Francisco.

Forgetting, by Andrea Lingenfelter

(Published in Cha: An Asian Literary Journal. March, 2016.)

"Remembering is difficult, but forgetting is even harder." 

                                            —Shang Qin (1930-2010)

The neighbor's kitchen garden

Grows inches every day

I pass by feathers of fennel

Pea vines still climbing but

Soon to tumble

Is it clematis that resembles

Purple starfish with pink and white mouths

And barbs at every point?

My memory a plot of land

I plant my secrets

So some may later blossom

Words traceable to their seeds

This low alley, its heavy air so

Proximate to water

The lake’s swampy edges a blur

Of duckweed and sodden grasses

By the time I return from this walk

I will have forgotten

The lines my footsteps tapped out

The massive waxy leaves of a plant I can't name

The throaty belligerence of crows

An old chest of drawers

Left beside a driveway

***

  Cha-avsnittet avslutas med en text om en välkänd (numera även i Sverige) asiatisk växt.

Rambutans, by Shuli de la Fuente-Lau

(Published in Cha: An Asian Literary Journal. March, 2016.)

My father didn't know any

better, so he chose the biggest bunch of them all.

That is how the story goes, the one reminisce of light,

in a courtship many dusty years ago, before the

empty stomachs, and the stale darkened bedrooms,

before the fights and the silences, and all

those words thrown against walls, before the disease,

and the staggering walk, before the trajectories

that refused to bend towards the same horizon but

somehow found themselves aligned, taut with dusty

rubberbands,

like the branches of those rambutan, bound together

in the biggest bunch that made my mother's eyes 

as wide as her stammering heart, looking, looking at the only

man who brought her her favourite.

Wild kids must sing for life

  Onsdagsrubriken "Webbmagasin" blev en felbedömning. De magasin jag valde ut har inte varit tillräckligt bra och det har inte spelat så stor roll om poeterna som publicerats varit proffs eller amatörer. Idag blir det två dikter skrivna av studenter och publicerade i Animal Literary Magazine.

  I adventskalendern presenteras ett bekant ansikte. Laleh Pourkarim har bott i Sverige sedan 10 års ålder. Efter 2005 års debutalbum mottog hon tre Grammisar och fick ett antal priser som årets nykomling. 2011/2012 kom framträdanden i Så mycket bättre och det storsäljande albumet Sjung.



  Lalehs musik spänner från visa till poprock, och bland inspirationskällorna märks Cornelis Vreeswijk, The Police och Cat Stevens.

***

  Deklaration för dagens webbmagasin: 
Animal: A Beast of a Literary Magazine is an online lit mag where artists of word and image explore the ephemeral boundary between human and animal. Each month we publish one story, one poem, and one essay that teeter on the divide between wild and domestic. We create a space where readers, viewers, writers, and artists expand the human experience by engaging their imagination with other creatures.

**

Still life, by Jade Hurter
(Published in Animal Literary Magazine, february 2016.)

In which I hold a piece of quartz
between my thumb and forefinger

In which the roots of waterlily
hang suspended in my throat

In which I hold a knife
to a whistling duck's dark neck

In which white ibis are stuck
like maggots to my body

In which I pluck them off, one by one
to reveal glowing wounds

In which I wear a crown of orange bills,
curving inward like tusks

In which my belly is swollen with egret blood,
though you cannot tell from looking

In which I am a sculpture of feathers,
dipping my palms in the river

In which I hold a knife -

***

  För två år sedan publicerade man Animal Best of 2012-2014. Bland de utvalda bidragen fanns nedanstående dikt.

Taxonomy, by Kirsten Holt
(Published in Animal Best of 2012-2014.)

When I was born I was all fawn—
cloven toes, antlered and bent back
throat to the stars—but my tongue
marked me mollusk; my speech full
of brine. I didn’t know whether I was bird
or scaled, would feel around my torso
yoga-bellied in cobra pose. But when a boy
first touched my breasts I became owl-feathered
and my mother could no longer drag a brush
through my feral hair. Wild child,
my hands lost themselves in math equations but curled
around the chalice like a scorpion’s
segmented tail. I would fold my orchid legs at the ankle,
swing my hips like a bell (like my mother’s
maiden name). All my lovers I named like catkins
and my flesh grew tangerine. I came like the bellowing
of bulls, unstrung as snake’s jaws—I thought myself Maenad,
terrible and beautiful, until you tore through me
with wolf teeth, told me I was wooden and damp, hyena-skinned
and libertine. I want you to open me
like the rind of citrus, crack my wicker breastplate
and pluck the walnut heart, my cavities
smooth as almonds. Dissect me, let me know
when you hold my egg in your palm
am I reptile or avian?

The Rumpus

  Webbmagasinen har inte riktigt levt upp till mina förväntningar. En del av dem har inte innehållit så mycket poesi som den första anblicken gav en hint om. Därför har jag undanhållit några avsnitt. I kväll höjs emellertid klassen. The Rumpus är av det rätta märket.

***

  Till att börja med har The Rumpus förmodligen den mest övertygande deklarationen av alla litterära webbplatser som jag har besökt.

"Welcome to TheRumpus.net. We don’t say that lightly—we’re thrilled you’re here. At The Rumpus, we’ve got essays, reviews, interviews, music, film, and poetry—along with some kick-ass comics. We know how easy it is to find pop culture on the Internet, so we’re here to give you something more challenging, to show you how beautiful things are when you step off the beaten path. The Rumpus is a place where people come to be themselves through their writing, to tell their stories or speak their minds in the most artful and authentic way they know how, and to invite each of you, as readers, commenters, or future contributors, to do the same. What we have in common is a passion for fantastic writing that’s brave, passionate and true (and sometimes very, very funny)." Source: Therumpus.net

***

  Jag inleder med att publicera en dikt av Leah Angstman som har ett intressant anslag. Den publicerades 15 november på webbplatsen.

Where were you when the world broke?, by Leah Angstman
(Published in The Rumpus, November 16th, 2016.)


Not in your echoing womb,
to scream at you across your fields to wake up,
not part of your denial that Earth is burning,
dehydrated, suffocating on itself—
I stood in a blue state
while you bled the red of its people—(Our people: recall how they grew up
across Holt Street, Maple Street from us, yes?)—
delusional that you were the world’s own,
unothered.

I was not your spit-take,
the drop bucket,
flag-raising, barn-burning,
white-hooded bonfires.

I was in my high school art class,
kicking my feet on a stool when JFK was shot, Mom says.
I even remember what I was painting when they made the announcement.

It’s like that.
I was hiding my face in my fingers,
my faith in my chest,
my heart torn from the fabric of my sleeve,
counting to convince math to work,
to STEM for little girl petals becoming,
but numbers broke each column
shrinking.

I was in my room, alone, when we were told we didn’t matter,
that our pussies could be grabbed,
that we were only droughting from Chinese hoax.

We’ll remember where we were.

I was holed inside myself disconnecting my umbilical from what you became,
the land I used to color with my mother’s paints,
before wrong hues muddied,
absence of color, symbol of stop and no and postage due,
white always showing underneath the red.

***

  Jag tycker framför allt att The Rumpus håller hög klass när det gäller deras recensioner. Till dessa läggs exklusiva intervjuer med stora namn. Nyligen utfrågades Pulitzer-vinnaren Gregory Pardlo. 
  Recensionen av Jennifer S. Chengs bok House A som publicerades 25 november upplevde jag som en lockelse in i författarens privata kalejdoskop.

(Utdrag ur Jennifer S. Chengs bok House A. Recension av Kim Liao. Publicerad i The Rumpus, November 25th, 2016.)

X

suppose an attic is where the history of a
past is stored away. in the absence of a
partition, this house is everywhere the
angle of that apex, spread as an
umbrella, a roof in the truest sense.

let us define nostalgia, then, not as a
remembrance but a feeling, familial,
that is on a precipice, vulnerable to the
winds, drifting and swelling for a nest.

***

  I en artikel som publicerades igår kan man få lästips inför ledigheten kring julhögtiden. Det är Barbara Berman som tipsar om såväl litteraturvetenskapliga verk som diktsamlingar. En poet som lyfts fram i artikeln är Peter Gizzi, och hans senaste verk Archeophonics.

Glitter, by Peter Gizzi
(From Archeophonics. Middletown, Connecticut : Wesleyan University Press, 2016.)
The old language
renews the pundits’
chatter, can sometimes
bunch in groups,
power jumbotrons,
or one’s laughter
in particular.
Just now, out
the car window
paper flags and
ballots kite.

Feel the parade
of air on your skin.
A cotton shirt
touching it. The
manufactured rays
are ancient, fall
through a time-gone
ticker tape array.
The floats and whorls
and banners above.

The old language
dozing in the sun.

PRISM International

  Igår kände jag mig lite hängig (därför inget skogsinlägg) och idag har jag haft migrän. Men jag försöker sätta ihop en text om PRISM International, det kanadensiska webbmagasinet. Jag fick deras två senaste utgåvor med posten i fredags.

***

  Först en deklaration (som jag inte tycker överensstämmer med verkligheten):
"The mandate of the magazine’s website is to provide a supplement to the print edition that connects readers with the literary community through author interviews, book reviews, news about Canadian writing and publishing events, and other information of interest to our readers, many of whom are writers themselves." Source: PRISM International

*

  Sommarens pappersutgåva inleds med vinnardikten från en nyligen avslutad tävling. Dikten heter "The flood of '37" och är skriven av Kevin Shaw. Den är utan tvekan numrets höjdpunkt, men den är en aning lång. Jag tar istället med en tänkvärd dikt av Jan Zwicky. Överlag upplevde jag en rätt dyster, ja rent av destruktiv stämning i sommarnumrets texter. 

Departure at dawn, by Jan Zwicky
(Published in PRISM International, Summer 2016.)

Bare rooms, the echo of white light.
The moon, I think,
is a white sail of pain.

The answer isn't love or furniture,
we're always on the move.

A satellite a hundred miles up
paces its slow curve. Landscape
glides beneath it. Scars.

***

"PRISM is the oldest literary magazine in western Canada. Here is a little of its history.

PRISM was established in 1959 as a journal of Canadian writing. PRISM was first born of a group of Vancouver writers, based out of UBC’s Creative Writing department. At the time, it was the only Canadian literary magazine west of Toronto. Under its first editor, Jan de Bruyn, the magazine published new writers at the time such as Margaret Laurence, Alden Nowlan and George Bowering." Source: PRISM International

*

  Jag tyckte bättre om höstnumret. I det förekom ett par bekanta namn: Paisley Rekdal och Lisa Baird. Den sistnämnda, en intressant performance poet som jag säkert återkommer till, har ett riktigt fint (men väl långt) bidrag med i utgåvan.
  För en gång skull fastnade jag för en prosadikt. Eve Joseph har fått med tre stycken och alla var knivskarpa betraktelser. Jag bifogar ett av de vackraste fotografier jag sett på gratistjänsten Pixabay.

(From PRISM International, Fall 2016. "Now that I live by the sea ...", by Eve Joseph.)

Now that I live by the sea, I am sure what the day will bring. Gulls stomp on the roof like heavy-footed prowlers causing me to wake in alarm. Broken shells litter the garden: clam, oyster and torn crab pincers serrated like nutcrackers. I'm standing at the window, drinking my morning coffee, when I see her. My mother is rowing against the current in the rain. I cup my hands and yell come in for a gin and tonic. It's not that awful rowing toward God, nothing that dramatic. It's just her, after all these years, the creak of oarlocks and a small wake trailing behind. Like the hapless Aeschylus I walk bareheaded, forgetting to look up at what might be hurtling toward me.

***

"PRISM takes pride in the diversity of our content and in our international readership. PRISM has published award-winning Canadian writers, such as Margaret Atwood, Michael Ondaatje, Irving Layton, Evelyn Lau, and Robert Kroetsch; prominent international authors, such as Ted Hughes, Jorge Luis Borges, and Tennessee Williams; and the Nobel Prize winners Salvador Quasimodo, Vicente Aleixandre, Gabriel Garcia Marquez, and Seamus Heaney." Source: PRISM International

  Den avslutande dikten är mer humoristisk än bra och författaren kommer nog aldrig bli en ny Sophie Hannah. Men efter de uppblåsta beskrivningarna ovan känns det kul att presentera följande dikttitel:

Plot for an episode of Scooby Doo, by Laura Farina
(Published in PRISM International, Fall 2016.)

A comet
hyped up
on Froot Loops

could not
outrun
those pesky
vampires.

The following things
are see-through -
ghosts,
Tupperware,
this statement -

I left something
in the van
you guys
go on ahead.

A map is found.
A floorboard creaks.
A cobweb is,
and then isn't.

Now there is nowhere
to go but down
and this darkness
has no
boring
pauses.

Cirque Journal

  Jag har fortsatt svårt med leveranserna av webbmagasinens pappersutgåvor. Jag väntar alltjämt på Prism International och Rattle. I kväll blir det istället Cirque Journal som har sin utgåva både online och i print. Jag tycker att deras magasin har en väldigt flott design och det innehåller ett flertal fantastiska bilder som ackompanjerar den stora mängden dikter. Så även om författarna är fullständigt okända för mig ger jag Cirque Journal ett högt betyg.

***

  Deras deklaration lyder:
"Cirque Journal was founded in 2009 by Anchorage poet Mike Burwell. Cirque, published in Anchorage, Alaska, is a regional journal created to share the best writing in the region with the rest of the world. This regional literary journal invites emerging and established writers living in the North Pacific Rim—Alaska, Washington, Oregon, Idaho, Montana, Hawaii, Yukon Territory, Alberta, British Columbia, and Chukotka."

*

Dusk, by Mercedes Lawry
(Published in Cirque Journal, Issue 7:2, 2016.)

Crows cross
the linen of evenings folds,
bruising the air
with bossy squawks.

Pink threads
the blotted clouds.
The day's fretting
begins to blur.

Soon sleep will dull
the barbs
as the moon glints
like a pearly bone.

***

Don't ever fall in love with a poet, by Elizabeth L Thompson
(Published in Cirque Journal, Issue 7:2, 2016.)

She'll tack your eyelids to stars,
Then tease you with slumber...
She'll exorcize blackness from midnight
And expect forgiveness...
She'll claim stability, as she
sells fiery conscience to Lucifer...
She'll fancy whoredom,
Then allege nunnery...

She'll pin your heartstrings to a chord chart,
And lead you to a feast of fantasy,
Promising role-play, roast and rum,
Then fall with rhythmic ecstasy
Into a bed of pillow-top, pillow-talk prosody.
Prepositions and pentameter,
Contriving a punctuated word blizzard
amidst a sultry reckoning...

Don't ever fall in love with a poet!

***

Labour day, South Cascades / Pepper Trail
(Published in Cirque Journal, Issue 7:2, 2016.)

The forest and I, never more idle than today
Not yet winter's sleep, but beginning of the fall
The fruitless conifers undisturbed by birds
The meadow now a dried arrangement
The bees gone together with the flowers

The time of striving is done, the young
Dispersed, busy elsewhere in the world
Work become their own secret to keep
Starting on a road to an unseen place
Barely visible, far below this hazy peak

Thornton Lakes, Washington State

Around the rock, my seat, gather metaphors
Dull grasshoppers, lizards, and flies
Bewildered by the chill, the lessened light
While high above, the vultures leave for California
Hoping always for a better choice of dead

Ink, sweat & tears

  Veckans webbmagasin har förekommit förr i bloggen. Nu tycks sajten "Ink, sweat & tears" dessvärre ha försämrats. Vid mina senaste besök kan jag konstatera att den ser mer ut som en blogg. Jag har lyckats läsa mig till att den numera drivs av en enda person. Det kan vara skälet, tidsbrist. Jag har i alla fall valt ut tre dikter från den senaste månadens publiceringar.

***

  Sajtens deklaration:
"Ink Sweat & Tears is a UK based webzine which  publishes and reviews poetry, prose, prose-poetry, word & image pieces and everything in between.  Our tastes are eclectic and magpie-like and we aim to publish something new every day."

*

You, by Richard Law
(Published in Ink, sweat & tears. October 5, 2016.)

Tonight, the sky sags, heavy with stars,
and the wind has a cough,
but I need a breeze,
though the winter frost
has sandpapered my knuckles. Cracked,
they look tough and dry
as elephant hide and dangle,
hesitant above the keys.
Fingers slowly flex out the frost
like a spider, dying. I loved you
like hell. Ah, and there it is-
the brain, beer-battered,
swimming in cliché:
the moon is at the window.

The stars freckle your cheeks.
Beyond, the river jumps
with singing salmon.
And I could’ve sworn
I brought you mountains
wrapped in bows.

But we built our love
on concrete, with cement mix kisses
and scaffolding, skirting round a building
that will never fall,
but will never be finished. I loved you, truly,
as Neruda would have loved you,
and even he would’ve tipped his dusty heart
up like an old box in an attic and searched
through the empty frames,
imagining things.

***

  IS & T grundades av författaren Charles Christian 2007 som en plattform för ny poesi och kortprosa, och för experimentella verk inom digitala medier.
  Sedan 2010 har Helen Ivory varit del av redaktionen och hon har nu ensamt ansvar för webbplatsens innehåll. Hon föddes i Luton, men bor nu Norwich med sin make, poeten Martin Figura där de basar för organisationen Cafe Writers.

*

The woman who could not say goodbye, by Angela Readman
(Published in Ink, sweat & tears. October 6, 2016.)

He’ll come to hear it soon enough, by the door
where a woman can simply put herself out with the milk.

The air there is ivory, cool as a piano key worn
by notions of leaving that didn’t play out. It is not a sole

act, farewell, but a language slow as wood smoke
doving the wall over the hearth. He’ll come to learn

the so longs she laid all around the house. Carved
into couches, an embrace of absence, sags where he can sit

now and observe her slow bow, stowed in the snowdrops
she placed in a vase. So suddenly, the clothes lines

look like unwritten confessions in diaries. The horizon is
a closed ballroom where days of the week refuse to dance.

***

  Sajtens publicerade dikter är till övervägande delen skrivna av mindre kända poeter. Mitt sista valda exempel är författat av en student vid The University of Gloucestershire.

Blues (part 1), by Taylor Edmonds
(Published in Ink, sweat & tears. October 13, 2016.)

I

The creature found me in Hensol Forest
during my sixteenth summer
I didn’t eat anything that wasn’t blueberry flavoured
for two weeks and three days

It lived in a wood cabin with a log fire
and floorboards that creaked under my weight
We ate blueberry pie together with our bare hands
My blue legs crossed on a matted fur rug
with rust-coloured stains on the underneath

I bathed with blueberries
burst open their plump skin
and left a blue-black stain on the cast-iron rim of the bathtub

The creature slept in a room
with tree roots grounded into the floor
Trunks stretched their arms across the walls
As we entered their crooked fingers unfolded

A bluebird sang a song I did not recognise

Ricepaper Magazine

  Jag har fått problem med uppstarten av rubriken "Webbmagasin" på onsdagarna. Jag hade tänkt inleda förra veckan med den kanadensiska PRISM International och har därför beställt deras sommar- respektive höstutgåva. De har inte anlänt.
  Det andra litterära magasinet jag har valt är också från Canada. Det heter Ricepaper Magazine.

***

  Deras historiebeskrivning:
  Ricepaper magazine är en kanadensisk tidskrift som fokuserar på asiatiska kanadensisk litteratur, kultur och konst sedan 1994.
  Det är en litterär tidskrift som publicerar ny poesi, skönlitteratur, drama, grafisk romaner, översättningar, och nästan alla andra typer av kreativt skrivande från författare över hela landet.
  De är en konsttidning; De publicerar recensioner av böcker, teater och film. De publicerar också originalkonst och fotografier.

  Tidskriften började 1994 som ett nyhetsbrev för de asiatiska kanadensiska författarnas Workshop (ACWW) - åtta sidor som fotokopierades back-to-back och häftades ihop.
  Ricepaper var ett sätt för ACWW-medlemmar att kommunicera med varandra samt att fira varandras framgångar. ACWW, en ideell organisation, fortsätter att publicera Ricepaper idag. Från deras anspråkslös start, blev Ricepaper en kvartalstidskrift som delas ut över hela landet, och publicerar nya röster som kommer ur det asiatisk-kanadensiska kultursamhället. Rispapper fortsätter att vara den enda kanadensiska litterära tidskriften i sitt slag.

**

  Jag har upptäckt att deras poesi-inslag är ganska begränsat. Det är betydligt fler konstrecensioner än poesibidrag på sajten. Jag har valt att recitera tre av de senast publicerade dikterna.

Skein, by Caroline Wong
(Published in Ricepaper Magazine. August 2016.)
My mother left me a suitcase of sweaters
she knitted in mohair, wool, acrylic
in blends of burnished ochre
bright carmine, sombre blue, sea green.

I see her now in her favourite red chair
by the front window
her feet on a low footstool
the southern light quietly pouring in
as she sat knitting
filling the stone hours that marked her days.
Silently her lips moved
as though counting the stitches
intricate and new on her worn needles.

Lost in her reminiscence
she intoned snatches of long ago conversations
from the skein of memories uncoiling
in the sudden dimness that flooded the room.

***

Do you see me?, by David Ly
(Published in Ricepaper Magazine. September 2016.)
Burning eyes,
open wide—
I could be you too,
despite the tears
and eyes as dry
as a seahorse
on an apothecary table
underneath
the Chinatown sky.

***

Become a butterfly and fly, by Cheonhak Kwon
(Published in Ricepaper Magazine. October 2016. Translated by John Mokrynskyj and Hana Kim.)

(for halmeoni)

Daughter!
Oh you daughter of man!
Sister!
How cold and agonizing it must have been!
How lonely it must have been
to withstand that night
Of dark history that aches to the bone!
Although the sun has risen slowly,
It’s still the break of dawn,
a morning with a corner darkened by shadow,

But spring has indeed come!
From between the railway ties over which cast iron wheels once ran,
A slender shoot soars up.
Oh look, there’s a yellow dandelion flower
Blooming on its stem!

Wave your wings over the spring hillside where you once gathered greens,
The shepherd’s purse flowers in the furrows of barley fields trembling in the breeze.
A little girl so chaste,
The passing wind would bring a blush to her cheek.

Although you can’t forget the torn skirt,
The bruises on your chest,
Now open again the skirt you tidied with tears of blood
And let the sunshine in.
Unlock the clot of blood with its warmth.
On this spring day
become a butterfly,
and fly up in glory.

Daughter!
Oh, daughter of Korea!
Sister!

(Author’s Note:
This poem is for comfort women who were coerced into sexual slavery by the Imperial Japanese Army during World War II.)