i cut my tongue on a broken country

""Here is an urgency that blows me open with a kind of bewildering, immediate intimacy. Kyo Lee somehow reaches into brain and heart and mouth to pull out words her readers wish they'd had the courage to have spoken themselves. There is a poetic nimbleness but also the stone of cultural complexity that is perhaps necessary to know what it means to be a queer Korean diasporic subject. These poems, had they existed before, might have changed the course of so much that has and has not been told. That these poems exist now shake that foundation to its very core. i cut my tongue will devastate. Everything is pulled inside out."" --Jenny Heijun Wills, author of Older Sister. Not Necessarily Related. ""Exquisite details permeate this debut collection. We follow a narrator whose worlds and self are fractured and mending. We hear translations, gasps, and 'tongue on tender rabbit meat.' The narrator is both the lifeless rabbit and the killer, riding trains through dimensions of memory, time, and place."" --Leanne Dunic, author of Wet and One and Half of You ""Formally inventive, playful, and tender, these poems are resoundingly alive. Not since Susan Musgrave has such a young poet burst onto the scene fully formed, writing heartbreakingly perfect poetry. Lee will continue to astound you with her wisdom, depth of talent, and unflinching eye."" --Sarah Tsiang, author of Grappling Hook ""Each poem in this compelling book is a beating heart, a prayer, an act of rebellion. There's a tender surprise in every line, every cutting image. In Kyo Lee's hands, words become anything but ordinary; her poems hit the secret bull's eye in our collective psyche."" --Susan Musgrave, author of Exculpatory Lilies ""Kyo Lee is an astounding new talent in queer Asian poetry. Her debut collection is a glittering assemblage of poems that slices straight to the bone as Lee dissects love, grief, desire, and the space between the world we live in and the world we long for. Lee's use of language is raw, resonant, and razor sharp, rendering intimate confessional poetry against the backdrop of motifs and themes that evoke the Asian North American diaspora with luminous beauty. Readers will leave i cut my tongue on a broken country as one leaves a dream, with Lee's evocative magic still trailing in their wake."" --Kai Cheng Thom, author of a place called No Homeland