Table of contents
Poem / Expressions

Passing Notes

The speaker of a poem refuses linguistic erasure, passing secret notes with untranslated lines in Korean—keeping the language alive during Japanese occupation.
White orchid flowers catch the light streaming in from the right-hand side of a photo, with the rest of the image in darkness.

“Passing Notes” is part of the collection Poets Resist, Refuse, and Find a Way Through. Read the introduction to the collection here.

Passing Notes - Listen
0:45

—For the preservers of the Korean language during Japanese Occupation (1910–1945)

in secret
오늘은 내가 …
today i—
got in trouble

ㄷ ㅏ ㅅ ㅣ

i didn’t want
my words
shredded and
force-fed to me

so i (꿀–꺽) swallowed
them whole instead

let them germinate
in my belly
and grow up through
my esophagus
and into my mouth

can’t let them
see the roots
entangled under my tongue
the vines between my gums
the flower hanging
from my uvula
swaying back and forth

i split my mouth open
like ripe fruit, spilling
the words they wanted
to hear from me
ㄷ ㅏ ㅅ ㅣ
so they wouldn’t see
the seeds i’d hidden
in the notes i passed
to you in secret

Born in Korea and raised in East Africa, Melanie Hyo-In Han recently moved from the U.S. to the U.K., where she is a Ph.D. candidate in creative writing. She is the author of My Dear Yeast and Sandpaper Tongue, Parchment Lips, and the translator of several collections of Spanish poetry (Hebel Ediciones). Han has received fellowships from Sundress Academy and Banff Centre, and is a co–editor-in-chief of Flora Fiction and a Two Languages Prize editor at Gasher Press.

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