June 17, 2018

Hsien Min Toh

DPRK
US
we have
a chance
to achieve
a truly wonderful
progressive
result for
north korea and
the world
yet it must be
tempered
because
by acknowledging
the other side
we validate it
has
after all
its own
will
underwhelming
in the
massive
spotlight
tool
we shine
upon
collapse
which
makes this
transparently
a gamble
with a
knowledge
nobel
developed his
peace prize on
explosives
the table
we have set
there
deliberately
weighs
a timer
a button to push
how else
shall we hope
to burn
our place
in a history that
survives
admits that
if none can
better
play the
part
charming men
of valour
whose handshakes
must be worth
so much
more than the
obscure
paper
truth
of signatures

from Poets Respond

__________

Hsien Min Toh: “I am a Singaporean, and as you can imagine the coverage of the Trump-Kim summit here in Singapore has been at saturation levels. I’ve thus written a response to it in twin cinema, a poetic form originating in Singapore that presents a poem in two (or more) columns such that it is possible to read each column vertically as independent poems or to read horizontally across the columns (see this blog post for more details). In this way the form enables a discourse between two conflicting points of view that come together to form a third, ambiguous position. Which seems to me to be what the summit was all about.” (web)

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