Poem in Place of a Poem 우리 family 를 생각해, says my mother, as she begs me not to print my earliest memory of the police. (I’ve written it elsewhere: the cold night. The parking lot. The cop’s jaw stomping out my mother’s pleas. The vulgar clink of cuffs. In the poem, her wail rises like a monument to nothing. In the memory, no grammar I can wave at the cop is enough to keep her safe.) I need the story, I say, to explain. Why I’m writing about this. She ends the call crying. The sound, a hole where a word might go. Here, too, I’ve failed to protect her from my need. From the cops. From mother and
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