Paradise

He had charged at me across the deep
swamp with a razor blade bound tightly to
a stick. On his body, we found a postcard
(with nothing on it) and a photograph of
an old man carrying a bundle of orchids.
There was no sign of his country, or faith.
This man who barreled towards me, while I
brandished a machine-gun, he was running
across a field of orchids, carrying a letter
writing itself, and he was, I know, racing
towards the whiteness of his glowing mind.

Author of the article

E. J. Koh​ ​is the author of A Lesser Love, winner of the Pleiades Press Editors Prize (Louisiana State University Press, 2017). Her poems, translations, and stories have appeared in Boston Review, Columbia Review, Los Angeles Review of Books,​ PEN America, ​and elsewhere. Koh accepted fellowships and scholarships from ​the ​American Literary Translators Association, ​the ​MacDowell Colony, Kundiman, Vermont Studio Center, and ​t​he Jack Straw Writers Program.​ ​She is the recipient of the 2017 ALTA Emerging Translator Mentorship and is co-translating Yi Won’s books When They Ruled the Earth (1996) and The Lightest Motorcycle in the World (2007).