Tanya Ko Hong | "Second Period"

In this week's episode of the Get Lit Minute, your weekly poetry podcast, we spotlight the life and work of Korean American poet, translator, columnist, and advocate for bilingual artists, Tanya (Hyonhye) Ko Hong. She is the author of four poetry collections featuring pieces in both English and Korean. Her first book, Generation One Point Five, was published in 1993 in Korean with English translations. Most recently, Hong released The War Still Within: Poems of the Korean Diaspora with KYSO Flash Press in 2019. Grounded in the true stories of Korean “comfort women,” the more than 200,000 women forced into sexual slavery by opposing forces during World War II, Hong’s first-person poems seek to recenter the voices of Korean and Korean-American women in the narrative of their own history. 

This episode includes a reading of her poem, “Second Period”, featured in our 2023 Get Lit Anthology.

“Second Period”

I got called in to a little dark room,

windowless.

Mrs. Lopez showed me a picture book.

Khang, I say.

No, river, she says.

Liver, I say.

Not liver, it’s river, she says.

That’s what I said, river, river, river, khang—

It’s a khang!

She shook her head.

Look at my mouth, she says, RRRRR

VVVVVVVVVVVVVVV

River.

River, I said.

Then shut my mouth.