A Poem by Guest Contributor, Cathy Park Hong

Guardrails are erected around every roof,
train platform and mountaintop,
only soft-serrated knives
allowed,

and Uncles, trousers belted
to their bellies, hike up and scream their warhorn
voices and corpses flee
for another day.

A dog trots off with a wrist.
Every day, they take my face away,
they take my face away like it’s—
an ashtray.

Steaming bowl of yams skinned clean,
my mind, a ruby thumb of coal.

Cathy Park Hong is a Korean-American poet who currently teaches at Sarah Lawrence College. In the past dozen years or so, she has released an innovative body of work, often utilizing mixed or inventive language to take on the new age. Her poems have been collected in her books Translating Mo’um (2002), Dance Dance Revolution (2007), and Engine Empire (2012). Cathy Park Hong graduated from Oberlin College, has an MFA from the Iowa Writer’s Workshop, and is a recipient of a Fulbright Fel- lowship, a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship, and a New York Foundation for the Arts Fellowship. Her writing has appeared in the New York Times, the Guardian, the Village Voice, and others.