“An Ordinary Misfortune” and “An Ordinary Misfortune” reprinted from A Cruelty Special to Our Species by Emily Jungmin Yoon. She will be girl, girl, girl is gravel and history will skip her like stone over water.

Girl is girl and she will never be a grandmother.

Her language is gravel because it means nothing. Against American soldiers, though they jump over stone walls. My grandmother’s father closes the gates. She is not my grandmother though my grandmother is girl. Capable, 1561, from Late Latin capabilis “receptive,” Unit 731 of the Japanese Empire inject us with monkey blood, our limbs are not receptive, Capable, used by theologians, from Latin capax “able to hold much,” our living bodies and extracted children, not holding, not Capable, capere “to take, grasp, layhold, catch, undertake, be large enough for, comprehend,” how to take, how to grasp, comprehend, our limbs catch fire, taken, our bodies not large enough, Capable, Sanskrit kapati “two handfuls,” two handfuls of intestines, are they Capable, Greek kaptein “to swallow, gulp down,” pills, gas, what more, Capable, Lettish kampiu “seize,” our limber bodies, carve our bodies, our eyes unseized by their sockets, Capable, limbs, capable of burning, of ash, charcoal, Capable, Old Irish cacht “servant-girl,” her fallopian tube, cut, living, not Capable, of living, leaving, Welsh caeth “captive, slave,” Capable, our names, maruta, from Japanese, “logs.” The trouble with trees is that their bodies and limbs are too capable, capable of burning, of living, capable of leaves, of leaving, charcoal, ash, and we think we have power. These are poems deeply invested in the minutiae of language, how one word leads to the next, connecting sound, rhythm, and meaning between languages, poets, and women.Īs the Poetry editor for The Margins Emily has cultivated a special home for Asian American poetry in all its richness, and we’re thrilled to celebrate her collection here on Poetry Tuesday, and at our NYC reading room on Tuesday, September 25 with Sueyuen Juliette Lee, Wo Chan, and Kristin Chang. The poems in this book are records of earthly and human violence-the sexual slavery of Korean comfort women, lives lost during natural disasters, and the everyday, accumulating ways that women hurt and are made to silently accept that pain. Emily Jungmin Yoon collects testimony and confronts history in her debut collection, A Cruelty Special to Our Species, which publishes today from Ecco Press.

A cruelty special to our species