Assistant Editor Maggie Su: In turn playful and radical, this poem brings to light the mutability of language. Here we have juxtaposed Korean and English, wisdom and love, child and parents. When the speaker discovers that “wisdom teeth” in English translates to “love teeth” in Korean, the poem unspools into a stunning reflection on false translation and the gap between culture and identity.
To hear Su read her poem, click below:
사랑니: (n) wisdom teeth
The dentist says I have
two wisdom teeth
forever sleeping sideways.
I tell my parents this & point
to the back of my mouth.
After thinking all my molars
were dead, they smile—exclaiming
that it’s time to get my 사랑니
out. They are wrong,
because 사랑 means love,
not wisdom—takes a whole
car ride back to settle
on the fact that wisdom teeth
are love teeth, that wisdom is 지혜.
I ask why—they shrug & say
that’s how it is. Like the time
Stacy had a sleepover, we all talked
about the garden snails
in her fish tank. Later whispered
how we’d put them in Stacy’s pillow.
After our mothers came to get us
past midnight, we were all home
trying to answer—why didn’t you
consider 지혜’s feelings—& wondering
if anyone else found it funny
that our moms were asking us
to consider wisdom’s feelings.
Su Cho currently serves as managing editor of Cream City Review and is working toward her PhD at University of Wisconsin–Milwaukee. Her poems are forthcoming and/or found in Colorado Review, Pleiades, The Journal, Crab Orchard Review, BOAAT, Thrush Poetry Review, PANK, Sugared Water, and elsewhere. You can find more information at www.suchowrites.com.
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