angry poetry corner: "a dream in a - z" by margaret rhee

We're getting poetic up here. It's time for another installment of Angry Poetry Corner, a regular weekly spotlight on the work of API poets -- not necessarily angry -- curated by Cara, our Angry Asian Intern. Because you could use a little more poetry in your life.

In the corner this week, a poem by Margaret Rhee:

A Dream in A – Z

We are on a road trip with my sister. It is after the divorce. One of the few times we could spend together. My sister didn't want to go on this trip, I remember. Neither did I. But we went. In the car we played a game.

Name countries from A – Z. All around the world.

My sister and I failed while my father was able to keep going.
How do you know all these countries?
I was a European History major at Korea University.
Appah is smart? my little self asked the world. A world that was a
locked box filled with maps, a big round globe that stopped with my fingers, a pair of binoculars through which you don't ever see anything.




















Dream, don't leave me.

Margaret Rhee is the author of Yellow, School of Dreams (forthcoming) and co-editor of Here is a Pen: An Anthology of Kundiman Asian American Poets. Her poetry has been published in the Berkeley Poetry Review, Lantern Review: A Journal of Asian American Poetry, and the textbook Koreans in America: History, Identity, and Community among other publications.