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“Originally the sonnet was a site of sexual violence. Male poets were rewarded for celebrating the women they hunted. They used the sonnet form and an instrument called the ‘blazon’ to convert their prey into exquisite English artifacts. Our anthologies still include holograms of jewel-like eyes, porcelain skin, ruby lips, hair like gold, and so on.”
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“Language spoken by parents to each other: fluent Korean. I grew up hearing marriage as a foreign language—literally and figuratively. I grew up hearing the sound of Korean as a language of Korean-bound han syndrome, disappointment, fury, resignation, the sense of being trapped forever, resentment, guilt. Every other word: a door slammed.”
― The Best American Nonrequired Reading 2018: New Fiction, Poetry, and Category-Defying Literary Gems
― The Best American Nonrequired Reading 2018: New Fiction, Poetry, and Category-Defying Literary Gems
“A LITTLE SONG AND A RECEIPT.
Doe: a deer, a female deer—
Often chased by sonneteers of old.
Caught, and killed, and bathed in fear,
turned to human blazons to be sold—
Eyes—$twin models of the stars.
Skin—$fine tissue wrought from gold.
Lips—$your favorite kind of flower.
Sex—$a secret still untold/ a Silk Road to unfold/ a thing for you to mold/ a source by you controlled.
Total: $—————.—”
― The Best American Nonrequired Reading 2018: New Fiction, Poetry, and Category-Defying Literary Gems
Doe: a deer, a female deer—
Often chased by sonneteers of old.
Caught, and killed, and bathed in fear,
turned to human blazons to be sold—
Eyes—$twin models of the stars.
Skin—$fine tissue wrought from gold.
Lips—$your favorite kind of flower.
Sex—$a secret still untold/ a Silk Road to unfold/ a thing for you to mold/ a source by you controlled.
Total: $—————.—”
― The Best American Nonrequired Reading 2018: New Fiction, Poetry, and Category-Defying Literary Gems
“Powered by the literalization of lyric personification into narrative event, a humanoid robot may wake up fully sentient and human (only to decide, preferring reverie, to fall asleep again).”
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“News
“…she fell into the water from the sky…”
Jae-in Doe
Decedent is an Asian female.
Twenty-two she just had turned.
The cause of death we cannot tell
Despite the many things we’ve learned.
TOP SECRET
My Doe-type can be difficult to track.
Yet here I am, my voice-box playing back
From lips hydrangea-lavender in hue
His thoughts during our first few interviews.
The hair is shoulder-length, the color black.
The height and weight suggest she won’t fight back.
The fingernails are unadorned and short.
The eyes are brown; no makeup do they sport.
The skin appears unpierced and untattooed,
Yet scars of ruby-pearl seem to protrude
Like self-inflicted jewelry on each arm
And wrist—which means she’s vulnerable to harm.
The language of her flesh, as I assess her,
Reveals Confucian worship of professors.
Her deference Korean gives me right
To use her innocence for my delight.”
― The Best American Nonrequired Reading 2018: New Fiction, Poetry, and Category-Defying Literary Gems
“…she fell into the water from the sky…”
Jae-in Doe
Decedent is an Asian female.
Twenty-two she just had turned.
The cause of death we cannot tell
Despite the many things we’ve learned.
TOP SECRET
My Doe-type can be difficult to track.
Yet here I am, my voice-box playing back
From lips hydrangea-lavender in hue
His thoughts during our first few interviews.
The hair is shoulder-length, the color black.
The height and weight suggest she won’t fight back.
The fingernails are unadorned and short.
The eyes are brown; no makeup do they sport.
The skin appears unpierced and untattooed,
Yet scars of ruby-pearl seem to protrude
Like self-inflicted jewelry on each arm
And wrist—which means she’s vulnerable to harm.
The language of her flesh, as I assess her,
Reveals Confucian worship of professors.
Her deference Korean gives me right
To use her innocence for my delight.”
― The Best American Nonrequired Reading 2018: New Fiction, Poetry, and Category-Defying Literary Gems
“Terraforming, I want to suggest, is a science-fictional representation of globalization. Central to both processes is the logic of simile, a figure of speech in which two things are compared explicitly. Many of the debates over globalization can be understood as a debate over precisely how explicit the comparability between the global and the local is or ought to be. Does-should-globalization homogenize the localities of our world?”
― Do Metaphors Dream of Literal Sleep?: A Science-Fictional Theory of Representation
― Do Metaphors Dream of Literal Sleep?: A Science-Fictional Theory of Representation
“MUTANT BLAZON
My rapist’s eyes remind me of the sun.
To look at them will mean that I go blind.
His mouth beside my ear—they form a gun.
Each breath: a bullet targeting my mind.
My rapist’s eyes remind me of the sun.
His throat: a fist to silence mine designed.
His reason: a ventriloquist’s illusion.
No tenor in the end could hearing find.
My rapist’s eyes remind me of the sun—
Too close for any vessel with a mind.
Survive or get to die—that is the question.
No longer have I any will to mind.
My rapist’s eyes remind me of the sun—
Not dead, not living, neither keen nor blind;
A daily haunting; memory rebegun;
Disaster in some future undivined.
I write, rewrite, a “sonnet” about rape
To hunt that voice I wish I could escape.”
― The Best American Nonrequired Reading 2018: New Fiction, Poetry, and Category-Defying Literary Gems
My rapist’s eyes remind me of the sun.
To look at them will mean that I go blind.
His mouth beside my ear—they form a gun.
Each breath: a bullet targeting my mind.
My rapist’s eyes remind me of the sun.
His throat: a fist to silence mine designed.
His reason: a ventriloquist’s illusion.
No tenor in the end could hearing find.
My rapist’s eyes remind me of the sun—
Too close for any vessel with a mind.
Survive or get to die—that is the question.
No longer have I any will to mind.
My rapist’s eyes remind me of the sun—
Not dead, not living, neither keen nor blind;
A daily haunting; memory rebegun;
Disaster in some future undivined.
I write, rewrite, a “sonnet” about rape
To hunt that voice I wish I could escape.”
― The Best American Nonrequired Reading 2018: New Fiction, Poetry, and Category-Defying Literary Gems
“I, Stereotype: Detained in the Uncanny Valley”
― Techno-Orientalism: Imagining Asia in Speculative Fiction, History, and Media
― Techno-Orientalism: Imagining Asia in Speculative Fiction, History, and Media
“Sometimes I dream that his rare book collection
Is made of all “his” women turned to fiction.”
― The Best American Nonrequired Reading 2018: New Fiction, Poetry, and Category-Defying Literary Gems
Is made of all “his” women turned to fiction.”
― The Best American Nonrequired Reading 2018: New Fiction, Poetry, and Category-Defying Literary Gems
