Northern Korea Postcard: Driving in South Hwanghae Province
- Northern Korea PostcardDriving in South Hwanghae Province
Jennifer Kwon Dobbs, poetry
While Professor Jeong explains a poet
should work with farmers to write of harvest,
you recall 195 kilometers away Professor Kim
said there's no poetry in the north.
Both answers seem compelled by law
concealing a revolver aimed at the senses
alert to an intruding thought. What of you
who dwells at the border
adopted by all four directions
the grass recovers as its own? It roots
in landmines, seeds ghosts who owe allegiance
only to where they're buried. You're
a fleeting image to these cornfields
that don't know you
were forcibly removed from the south,
that transgress the border
like a tunneling army turns and overturns
every stone to unlock forbidden ground. [End Page 680]
jennifer kwon dobbs is the author of Paper Pavilion, Interrogation Room, and the chapbooks Notes from a Missing Person and Necro Citizens. A recipient of grants from the Daesan Foundation and Minnesota State Arts Board, among others, she is currently coediting an anthology of autocritical writing on kinship and is associate professor of creative writing and director of Race and Ethnic Studies at St. Olaf College.
