Notorious

BY CATHY PARK HONG 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?

Morning Sun

BY CATHY PARK HONG 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.

"Yes. Not only is there more than one kind of knowledge, but the experiential has little to do with the personal or subjective. This is not particular to me. I could mention many examples in other parts of the world where the personal and the collective are never in opposition to one another. In Western societies, there is a quasi-religious allegiance to individualism—a mindset that advocates individual achievement and self-fulfillment, and defines individual freedom as private pursuits often opposed to communal good, in terms of material well-being and mental power and control. But aside from the desire to be different and to distinguish oneself from society, which I totally understand, I have no affinities with such a ruthless form of individualism. We know very well that we carry with us the collective, and we carry it all the time. On certain occasions, it’s even difficult to say, “This is my take on things.” In many parts of the world, people do not have this sense of individual entitlement. So, whatever is presented as personal is like the "I" used in poetry. You use an I because language requires it in grammar and sentence structure. But the I is not merely about personal subjectivity; it’s actually there as an open space to invite many Is to inhabit it." --Trinh T. Minh-ha