"They Come," by Cathy Park Hong
Let's gather and explore an intricate and violent poem, one that I have not quite figured out yet but am intrigued by nonetheless.
I have brought forward to you all a tough poem today. Ever since reading it, I cannot get it out of my head. In recent months, I finally read Minor Feelings by Cathy Park Hong. The memoir/essays/criticism has been on my reading list for years now and it did not disappoint at all. Throughout the book, Hong often returns to the poetics of language and the language of poetry, often circling around translation and writing in English as a second language.
Of course, once I realized that she was a poet, I knew I needed to and wanted to read some of Hong’s work. This is the first of her poems I came across and it is stuck inside of me now. Hong has such a distinct voice in this poem: choppy and violent—two qualities you don’t often associate with poetry. I wrote this letter to you all both as an invitation to explore this poem and also as a way for me to untangle all of my thoughts. I have by no means uncovered all that this poem has to offer, but I think I’ve made a good start.
Come and gather and experience something new, and perhaps learn something about yourself and your perception of the world along the way.
They Come
by Cathy Park Hong
Stamp the earth rind down, shuck our boots & nap on rubber cockscomb pad. Rise up & ride in, poles poked through with hide of kid flap from blither wind. Ride into a town of tires stacked, a tarred prehistoric castle. A town of shacks painted kiwi green latches guano rimmed. Road’s a batter of blood & dust. One serf scurries off cowed & cloaked. Linseed-eyed & broad of face. Hold, I say. She says oh gods once nested on our tire hills but now that tire factory flakes to tinder too. Are you here from the world above? Now come. Heal my kin. Are you here from the world above? We douse ourselves with flame retardant & douse the town to flame. Are you here from the world above? We hear her death in flames We hear other deaths in flames Along each town we pass We rave & rove & gore the last oil rig hidalgo in his tin gilt throne, His ale we drink, his heart we jar. We are from the world above, We sing & jig but like Sisyphus, As we eye from afar, As each child crawls out their gutted hole, & rebuild each dead town — We can never rest.
There are two distinct voices in the poem. In the beginning, we read the voice of the “we;” they are the conquerors, the destroyers, the people who put fire retardant on themselves and set towns on fire. Then there is another voice that comes in the form of the “Linseed-eyed & broad of face” woman. She is a serf. She is a person who is trampled and burned by the “we” in this poem.
Listen to the voice of the “we” in the beginning. All of the verbs are forceful and short, and I imagine them being shouted like commands: stamp, shuck, rise, and ride. These words and the opening stanzas have the tone of an army. The place where they nap (notice how it’s not rest or sleep, just a short nap) is a rubber pad.
We watch this cavalry ride through a small town with tents of kid skin. Hong is purposefully shocking the reader by enjambing the line at “kid,” even though she is likely referring to a young goat’s skin. The use of enjambment there amplifies the ominous tone of the poem. Notice how Park builds this world. I imagine the world of Mad Max–dystopian, buildings of tires, and a mass of people riding through towns with no care for the people who live here. Look at the line she wrote to describe the road:
Road’s a batter of blood & dust.
The people live underground, claiming gods once lived on top of a tire tower, but the company has since dissolved to flakes of ash. Repeatedly, the serf asks the newcomers, this band of plunderers, “Are you here from the world above?” She is asking, are you one of our guides here to help us. Are you one of the manufacturers and capitalists that once owned this world and left it, and us, in ashes?
The plunderers respond by burning down the town, tires and people alike. The Mad Max band continues to an oil rig, which they destroy and jar the heart of (LOVE that line). In the midst of celebrating the destruction of this old world, Hong likens the band of plunderers to Sisyphus, never done burning down towns if there is a child crawling out of the ground and ready to rebuild.
I have trouble with this poem. I don’t know if I should be supporting the people burning down the towns. It seems they want to destroy what capitalism, greed, and destruction of the world built. But, in doing this, they kill people who are presumably innocent and unfortunate. Who is building the new town? Is it the child, revolting against the marauders? Is it the marauders, building a new world in their image from the ashes of the town and the bones of the murdered?
This is a complex poem with so much punch and pain contained in short, terse stanzas. It feels like the poem itself is about to burst from all of the violence packed into it–it’s dense with emotion. I think that is why I have sent you this poem today. This poem sunk into me, and like a barbed arrow, I can’t pull it out without further hurting myself. Maybe I should just leave it where it is and grow around it. Isn’t that what the people in this poem do?
If you enjoyed reading this poem… you can read more poetry by Cathy Park Hong here or read her book Minor Feelings.
If you want to read more about dystopian worlds in poetry… read T.S. Eliot’s iconic poem “The Waste Land” here.
If you want to try writing poem… write a poem in a world that is so unlike the one you live in—write a Mad Max world, a Bizarro world, a mirror image of all that you know.