Since I've written Sa-I-Gu, I've performed it in New York, California, and Minnesota. Reading it is always a visceral experience for me--I try to relive the emotions I felt while writing it, so rage, grief, and hope rise to the surface while performing it. It contains fragments of our story--my story--the story that has been ignored or denied by the media. The point of it is to communicate this experience, so people of all backgrounds feel it, with their minds and hearts.

Sa-I-Gu

"We are our first and last line of defense. Me. You."
K.W. Lee

koreans mark disaster
with numbers--4-29--Sa-I-Gu.
no police. no help.

fire. if I touch
the screen my fingers
will singe or sing.

raw hands rip nikes
out of boxes, break glass
into white cobwebs.

my mother presses her hand
to her ruined lips.

*

we see grainy reels of a black
fish flopping on concrete
arched, kicked, nightsticked,

flopping not fish but black man--
here I rub my own tender
wrists, ask unanswerable questions--

why are the cops doing this?
my mother will answer simply,
wisely, because they are bad.

of the looters, because they are mad.
and why hurt us ­ she chokes
because we are close          enough.

I moan, slip under the fold
of her arm. she strokes my hair

and keeps me protected
as I must one day protect her.

*
protection.

l.a.p.d. ring beverly hills like a moat,
won¹t answer rings from south central
furious and consistent as rain.

where did our women hide--
under what oil-stained
chevy did they breathe,

light, light, covering
the biting mouths
of wet-eyed children?

who pulled them
by hair into riot
for a crime

they did not commit

who watched and did nothing?

*

Sa-I-Gu

Sa-I-Gu: page two

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