Characters for the Next Generations
One generation of heirloom tomatoes divides their eggs, Georgia San Li is an emerging writer, currently working on poetry and Untitled: A Portrait from the Tarmac, a novel. Her poetry has appeared or is forthcoming in Antigonish, Atlanta, California Quarterly, Confluence, La Piccioletta Barca, and elsewhere. She is the author of Wandering, her first poetry chapbook, a Minerva Rising finalist and selected for publication by Finishing Line Press. She has been supported by the Kenyon Review Summer Novel Workshop and the Community of Writers at Olympic Valley in both poetry and fiction. Check out HFR’s book catalog, publicity list, submission manager, and buy merch from our Spring store. Follow us on Instagram and YouTube. Disclosure: HFR is an affiliate of Bookshop.org and we will earn a commission if you click through and make a purchase. Sales from Bookshop.org help support independent bookstores and small presses. ____________________________________ 1. A dollimja, a generational marker, once confined to male descendants but now sometimes used for women as well, may further complicate gender identification. See, e.g. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Korean_name.↩
bubbling with blisters, bloody
broken stems in the end.
How many precious pigeon-red rubies will man
flood with fires and
vengeance of war in the end?
Who were the three African women
in tangerine silks and golden slippers,
rerouted at Charles De Gaulle again in the end?
A telecom engineer died of a heart attack at Novatel,
blue body flown to Texas
on the company plane, cargo in the end.
Would salarymen eat bowls of ramen with
tonkatsu and bamboo shoots,
in subway stations at Aoyama in the end?
How long did the security caravan of Range Rovers
maneuver over dunes before
locating the lost daughter in the end?
She ate alone in Mayfair, shriveling in a black pant suit,
tandoo-ri chicken and its charcoaled skin,
pinot grigio in the end.
In naming the unborn grandson, only he heard
the noemic rush-hour traffic,
roods over rooftops outside his window in the end.
Did Fernando de la Rosa hide guns with the dulce de leche
for Christmas, blue-blazered foreigners
at Benito Juárez airport in the end?
After dinner in the medina, sprigs of sugary dates await you,
but beastly brooding, desert sky
swallows you whole in the end.
Would the Internet of Things ever learn to dance,
become human chanteuse,
discover the meaning of star-beds in the end?
Along the green gushing river entering Sao Paulo,
would shanty towns shout,
studded with hailstones in the end?
When my grandfather named me, devastation grew
rooted in the character for one, for unique, for singular—
fault lines, all breaking open in the end.1
Heavy Feather Review 