ISSUE TWELVE | SPRING 2019
Behind rainbow Skittles, Marlboros,
Whatchamacallits––a recessed figure
Pines: her profile scored by fluorescence
Like a knockoff Vermeer. Just as
Antique coins are painstakingly preserved,
She’s rendered motionless: boxed in.
Days endless. Hubbub of restive streets
Beyond tchotchkes & plexiglass ricochet
Off walls exalting the departed: framed
First dollar bill, photos of random
Strangers jaundiced with soot & wear.
She, a generation without proof of birth––
Not a single memento containing any
Modicum of mirth. Holding her tongue
With a fury untouched––a solitude so great,
She remains mighty in anonymity.
Tangrams of daily trade. Can anyone
Truly inhabit another––how meat
Of the body must be seized then cleaved:
Laid bare to be wolfed down whole
As it’s done in the wild.
Born in Seoul, Korea, Su Hwang was raised in New York then called the Bay Area home before transplanting to the Midwest, where she received her MFA in poetry from the University of Minnesota. A recipient of the inaugural Jerome Hill Fellowship in Literature, the Academy of American Poets James Wright Prize, writer-in-residence fellowships at Dickinson House and Hedgebrook, among others––her debut poetry collection BODEGA is forthcoming with Milkweed Editions in October 2019. She is the co-founder of Poetry Asylum with Sun Yung Shin, and teaches creative writing with the MN Prison Writing Workshop. Su currently lives in Minneapolis.
DO YOU LOVE NAT. BRUT?
If you enjoy Nat. Brut and consider yourself a reader of the magazine, please consider donating to us! We are a fledgling non-profit on a shoe-string budget, and our staff is 100% volunteer (all of us!). Every dollar you give goes directly back into the operations of the magazine. Consider giving today!