Su Hwang

To Infinity & Beyond

Our Ford Granada was the center
                          of my universe: fake wood

                                          paneled doors, beige interior, piano
                                                        sized hood. Cityscapes whizzed by

like a movie shot from a train
                          barreling down wobbly tracks

                                          ready to fly off the rails. Everything
                                                        stood as entertainment; I spied

dueling squirrels, fleets of buses,
                          mothers lulling strollers, swarms of

                                          pigeons & chess players in the park…
                                                        All the ways to keep

from listening to them bicker,
                          neither able to yield or raise

                                          a white flag as father launched
                                                        the station wagon like a rocket ship--

bricks for feet—burning rubber to
                          orbit the diorama of the solar system

                                          I made for Mr. McGee’s science class
                                                        to travel to Styrofoam Jupiter, Mars,

then back. When fuel ran low, my brother & I’d
                          blow fiery breath against rear windows

                                          then stamp closed hands, draw in toes:
                                                        collage of teeny footprints

of intrepid astronauts doomed
                          to hike the craters of the ashen moon

                                          (One of these days Alice...one of these days,
                                                        bam, zoom, straight to the moon!) & drift

past the deaf expanse of space alone.

---

1.5 Proof

Never a punch or slap across the countenance: greatness
             is greater in smashing—force equals exertion against
 
                          the farthest wall. Hypotenuse is more than the sum of its
                                        parts: pearls of a dinner plate plus Heineken emeralds

have a higher volume than the density of their whole.
             Take the square root of ardor then round to the nearest

                          positive integer, yielding a hunger that does not exceed
                                        the mean. When she called the cops, we peered through
 
the keyhole from a dream within a dream. Booming
             voices fractured certitude as he cowered at their feet.
 
                          Their authority: a compound fraction. Two white men
                                        in uniform over an immigrant man and his wife in fetal
 
positions—neither able to comprehend their simple
             commands. Get down. Put your hands up. Up! Stay down!
 
                          Down! Two children hiding in the closet to devise magic
                                        carpets—he no longer adding up to an invincible giant--
 
fractal rage lost in translation. Hands folded in prayer,
             kneeled in a right angle to factor: (x) must never happen
 
                          again. Multiply (y) into the denominator of exponential
                                        decay. Divide extraction to posit true values of coveting
 
                                                     zero = the summation of erasures.




--
Su Hwang is an award-winning poet whose debut collection BODEGA is a finalist for the 2018 Lindquist & Vennum Book Prize with Milkweed Editions. Born in Seoul, she called NYC and San Francisco home before transplanting to the Twin Cities to attend the University of Minnesota, where she received her MFA in Poetry. She is a VONA alum, teaches creative writing with the Minnesota Prison Writers Workshop, and is the co-founder of Poetry Asylum with poet Sun Yung Shin. Su currently lives in Minneapolis.