I first dreamed of a type of poetic engagement with text that referenced & reflected the frequency– or weight– of language when I encountered the Department of the Army Inspector General No Gun Ri Review, a report of over 300 pages that the U.S. issued to cover up the massacre of over 200 civilians it had committed during the Korean War.

Extending upon the critical work that incredible poets and scholars have done with violent institutional documents, like Layli Long Soldier, M NourbeSe Philip, Nicole Sealey, and Solmaz Sharif, I wanted to create a form that would illuminate the ways that the industries of modern empire use excess to exhaust those trying to fight– or at the very least, understand– mechanisms of colonial violence, burying our dead under a barrage of language and image served to distance us from truth and connection. Simultaneously, I was curious about how we could hone in on, interfere with and re-surface the language that was there– and that wasn't.

I began this by crafting poetic graphs from the language that appeared in the report. But, I wanted to expand this kind of engagement for anyone grappling with language made excessive, bureaucratic, or institutional to obscure the violence underneath. This is a tool for you: to engage with, break up, and re-cover meaning drained by these sources we rely on to survive, these sources which are killing us. Alternatively, it can be a tool to create new insight and connections from our own language banks and sources. Either way, find connections, have fun!

Love, Chae