Cindy Juyoung Ok comes from Los Angeles, California.
Cindy's poem "[There is an island]" appears in the Winter 2020 issue of Carve. Order your copy here.
Your poem features a dichotomy of straightforward, factual prose and tonal ambiguity. Even the title has it. Is there anything you'd like to share about its construction?
Often we find that the specific can reveal the universal. I was interested in how generalities can reveal something particular and wrote several prose poems in this crisp, official tone—ambiguous I think in what office it declares, how seriously it takes itself and its content. Once the tone was internally cogent in the first line or two, the rest seemed only able to be deployed this way. There’s an implicit claim being made about objectivity or neutrality in that “factual prose.” Then this is broken in places, with value judgments given, still, by fact, but positioned by focus. Later sentences especially have less predictable endings, two ideas or statements given strange weight or forced into relation. And the title refers to the island in the only way that is not time-limited or disputable by the countries and by large imperial forces.
Speaking of construction—your poem reads almost as something out of a book of fairy tales or fables. Is there a real island that inspired this piece?
There is indeed a real island, but my hope was to point to the way stories of power—and the aftermath of its performance—are old and familiar. And how, when wronged in a world run by ownership, we hold onto our right to possession of the smallest things, either to indicate or conceal. In relationships defined by domination, and the scope and limits of domination, the subordinator and subordinated seem to be the only live actors. But we have the mention of rising sea levels, which affects the subordinated first (as is often the case), and cannot ultimately be controlled or evaded, even by the subordinator.