Ballad in A
A Kansan plays cards, calls Marshal
a crawdad, that barb lands that rascal a slap;
that Kansan jackass scats,
camps back at caballada ranch.
Hangs kack, ax, and camp hat.
Kansan’s nag mad and rants can’t bask,
can’t bacchanal and garland a lass,
can’t at last brag can crack Law’s balls,
Kansan’s cantata rang at that ramada ranch,
Mañana, Kansan snarls, I’ll have an armada
and thwart Law’s brawn,
slam Law a damn mass war path.
Marshal’s a marksman, maps Kansan’s track,
calm as a shaman, sharp as a hawk,
Says: That dastard Kansan’s had
and gnaws lamb fatback.
At dawn, Marshal stalks that ranch,
packs a gat and blasts Kansan’s ass
and Kansan gasps, blasts back.
A flag flaps at half-mast.
– Cathy Park Hong (American poet, b. 1976)
Brought to you by the letter "A".
[daily log: walking, 9km]
What’s with the “I’ll have?” It seems a strange choice of words in the context.
Well, that’s a good catch.
On the one hand, no poet is perfect. Perhaps she just couldn’t or didn’t want to solve that problem. Then again, there may be some specific reason for it – calling the reader’s attention to the “I” speaking in that moment, by the exception. Also, she may be trying (in a somewhat naive way, linguistically, to be sure) to underscore that “Kansas drawl” wherein “I’ll” is a homophone for “all” – hence in fact it is an “A” in disguise. I prefer this last explanation, but acknowledge she could have approached it with more sophistication, i.e. by also including some other “disguised A’s” as well as perhaps being more aware that the letter “A” in English actually represents a rather large number of distinct sounds, most of which appear in the poem. Is the poem focused on the grapheme “A” or on the sound of it? If the latter, what sound is it, of the many sounds “A” has? Or perhaps her “I’ll” is exactly for the purpose of sparking discussions such as this? She is, after all, a poet noted for provocative approaches to the definitions of language – she apparently published a book which is entirely in a self-invented “creole” (an imaginary “future blend”) of Korean, English, Spanish and French.