Song of a Reformed Headhunter

  Last night's event "It's white supremacy, not sex addiction, stupid!" was informative and inspiring. As we remembered the eight victims of the March massacre in and around Atlanta, six of whom were Asian women, the readers also reminded us, in eloquent prose and poetry, of the long history of racism, sexism, and imperialism in the US. Thank you, Jerrine Tan, Paula Mendoza, Celina Su, Devi S. Laskar, and Pauline Park, for speaking to and with us. A big thanks too to our co-organizer, the Evergreen Review. Singapore Unbound is donating all revenue from the sale of Gaudy Boy books from March to May to MinKwon Center for Community Action, a non-profit based in Flushing, Queens, which advocates for low-income tenants, turns out the vote, and provides social services in Korean and Chinese. Please check out our books: https://singaporeunbound.org/gaudyboy To read new work by Celina Su and Devi S. Laskar, go to: https://evergreenreview.com/

Weekly column written for the Singapore Unbound newsletter. Sign up here . Psalm 118 is an abecedarian, as is Geoffrey Chaucer's translation of a French prayer, "An ABC." The abecedarian is an ancient poetic form that follows an alphabetical order. Psalm 118 consists of twenty-two stanzas, one for each letter of the Hebrew alphabet. In Chaucer's poem, the twenty-three stanzas go from A to Z (skipping J, U, and W). The modern abecedarian is now more of a mnemonic device, but the tone of prayerful petition lingers. Secular prayer and sacred memorial, Devi S. Laskar's "Elegy Abecedarian" calls us to remember the eight people murdered in Acworth and Atlanta just last month. Six of the eight people killed by a white suspect were women of Asian descent. Among the six was Suncha Kim...