Kitano - Sky Country

S KY C OUNTRY Copyright 2017 by Christine Kitano All rights reserved Manufactured in the United States of America First Edition 17 18 19 20 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 For information about permission to reuse any material from this book, please contact The Permissions Company at . Publications by BOA Editions, Ltd.a not-for-profit corporation under section 501 (c) (3) of the United States Internal Revenue Codeare made possible with funds from a variety of sources, including public funds from the Literature Program of the National Endowment for the Arts; the New York State Council on the Arts, a state agency; and the County of Monroe, NY. Private funding sources include the Lannan Foundation for support of the Lannan Translations Selection Series; the Max and Marian Farash Charitable Foundation; the Mary S. Mulligan Charitable Trust; the Rochester AreaCommunity Foundation; the Steeple-Jack Fund; the Ames-Amzalak Memorial Trust in memory of Henry Ames, Semon Amzalak, and Dan Amzalak; and contributions from many individuals nationwide. See Colophon on for special individual acknowledgments. Cover Art: Hallelujah: The Floating Mountain by Michael Yamashita Cover Design: Sandy Knight Interior Design and Composition: Richard Foerster Manufacturing: McNaughton & Gunn BOA Logo: Mirko Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Names: Kitano, Christine, 1985- author.

Title: Sky country / Christine Kitano. Description: First edition. | Rochester, NY : BOA Editions Ltd., [2017] | Series: American poets continuum ; no. 162 Identifiers: LCCN 2017012292 (print) | LCCN 2017018707 (ebook) | ISBN 9781942683445 (eBook) | ISBN 9781942683438 (softcover) Subjects: LCSH: Japanese AmericansPoetry. | BISAC: POETRY / American / Asian American. | HISTORY / Asia / Korea.

Classification: LCC PS3611.I8775 (ebook) | LCC PS3611.I8775 A6 2017 (print) | DDC 811/.6dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2017012292 BOA Editions, Ltd. 250 North Goodman Street, Suite 306 Rochester, NY 14607 www.boaeditions.org A. Poulin, Jr., Founder (19381996) For my mother and father,
okage sama de Table of Contents

A Leavingafter a poem by Wisawa Szymborska Some country is changing shape, these people fleeing those people. It is difficult to name what these people leave behind. They might open closets and dresser drawers but then close them: the wool coat, so long saved-for, too bulky, the lace underwear still wrapped in tissue. They might carry bundles on their backs, or bags in both hands.

Or, they carry children, wailing infants swaddled in cotton, runny-nosed toddlers who would otherwise fall behind. By sunset, they walk or run in orderly rows. Their path barely lit. The sky a slate on which no stars dare write a name. ISky Country The Korean word for heaven is ha-neul nara, a kenning that translates literally to sky country. It was a word often used by potential immigrants to describe the United States.

My grandmother hoards gold dollar-coins, the heavy discs etched with Sacagaweas over-the-shoulder glance, an infant son tied in a blanket to her back. She doesnt know who Sacagawea is, or Lewis and Clark, or figures from most stories we read in elementary school. Instead, the Bible and Hollywood sculpt her history. Over dinner shell re-enact the events in The Ten Commandments: she raises her arms, as if in victory, to summon the Pillar of Fire and split the Red Sea, her small hands pushing apart two walls of water so that Charlton Heston can arrive safely on the bank. Yes, shell nod, soup dripping from her chin. Thats exactly how it happened.

My Korean is weak. I understand only pieces of what she says. But from her cycle of stories, familiar nouns and images emerge. 1953: Pregnant with my mother, my grandmother flees south, my aunt strapped to her back. (At this point, my aunt will point to her bowed legs, the calves that curve outward below the knees, as evidence of this journey.) There is always a boat, a river, and a fire. My grandmother runs toward one and away from another but someone, perhaps my grandfather, grabs her hand to pull her back.

I dont know why. There are men, Korean men and American men. She tells them her name, or that shes pregnant, but I never understand how or if they respond. Often, the stories end with her turning around to find her husband has vanished. Heaven. Sky Country.

In America, the streets overflow with milk and honey. For stealing day-old donuts, my mother is fired from her first American job, cleaning offices in a downtown Los Angeles high-rise. Still, this is America. America is good, she says. You dont know how good you have it here. I return to Los Angeles for New Years.

My grandmother asks where I live now and tries to pronounce the words: New York. Is it hot or cold there, she asks. Is there Korean food? Is there a church? She asks if New York is where President Bush lives, then what will happen if America loses the war. Would I raise the Iraqi flag, give up English for Arabic? I want to tell her its not that kind of war, but I dont have the words. She cackles. You dont know, she says.

My grandmother speaks Korean but, a child of colonial Korea, reads and writes in Japanese. Now, of course, she conducts her life in English. She worries what Ill do with an English degree, not because of the adjunct situation or the overall decline of the humanities, but because she knows countries are not the concrete, black-outlined shapes that seem so permanent when we open our textbooks. She knows how history can wipe away a persons language. Shes been the real civilian I can only try to imagine when I read articles in the newspaper over hot coffee. Its my grandmother who ran, four months pregnant, five-year-old daughter clasped to her back.

Its she who pleaded and begged, who prayed that a soldier would listen when she screamed her name. Its her home that was severed by an arbitrary line, her family, like a brittle branch, snapped down the middle. After the traditional dinner of dumpling soup, my grandmother calls me over, unzips the small pocket on her backpack. She takes out a wrinkled manila envelope. Inside are one hundred gold dollar-coins. Shes been collecting all year, trading for them at the Mexican grocery and the Hollywood Park racetrack.

I thank her, but tell her not to go through all the trouble, that they arent worth more than paper money. She shrugs. You dont know, she says. IINow regard what sort of shapethis constellation takes.It sits there like a jagged scar,massive, on the massive landscape.It lies there like the rusted wireof a twisted and remembered fence. Lawson Fusao Inada, Concentration Constellation Gaman. A Japanese term meaning to endure, persist, persevere,or to do ones best in times of frustration and adversity.... Gaman It was night when the buses stopped. Gaman It was night when the buses stopped.

It was too dark to see the road, or if there was a road. So we waited. We watched. We thought of back home, how the orchards would swell with fruit, how the trees would strain, then give way under their ripe weight. The pockmarked moon the face of an apple, pitted with rot. But of course not.