Managing Editor Lisa Ampleman: This sonnet is internally expansive, even as it uses the conventions of the form. It pulls in apples, knees on pavement, wounds, washboards, war zones, and more as it examines the interplay of language, family, and country.

Listen to Kim read the poem:

Sonnet As First Words

Say ah. Say eomma. Say appa. Say, aren’t you too old
to be learning English? Say apple. Say appel. Say
there is more to the world than where your knees
have kissed the pavement. Say spit. Say sorry. Repeat after me:
native speaker. Say grace. Say, This is my home. Let’s say
you love her, and she doesn’t love you back. Call it language.
Don’t you know the present tense of wound is still wound?
Say mother. Say father. Say it over again. Let your tongue
become a washboard, your body past tense, your body minor
chord. Say amendment, contraction, the declaration
like a prayer. Say war zone. Say war zone. Say,
I am waiting for this country to love me back. Future
tense. Repeat after me. Stay quiet. Stay quiet. Stay
a little longer. Say eomma, appa.

Elane Kim is a Korean American writer from California. Her writing can be found in Poetry, Narrative Magazine, One Teen Story, and more. The editor-in-chief of Gaia Lit, she is the author of Postcards (Bull City Press, 2022) and Antibody (River River Books, 2026).