{"id":3234,"date":"2004-10-06T23:19:05","date_gmt":"2004-10-07T03:19:05","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/lia.bulaong.com\/wp\/?p=3234"},"modified":"2004-10-06T23:19:05","modified_gmt":"2004-10-07T03:19:05","slug":"to_nintendo_a_poem","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lia.bulaong.com\/blog\/2004\/10\/to_nintendo_a_poem\/","title":{"rendered":"to nintendo, a poem"},"content":{"rendered":"

A poem by Ishle Yi Park, the current poet laureate of Queens, NY:<\/p>\n

\n

To Nintendo<\/strong><\/p>\n

Before you, life was unbearable –
a flat screen and ping pong ball.
But oh, you sleek grey box,
you already wrapped present!<\/p>\n

We sat in front of you, awed
as if you were the first red sunrise.<\/p>\n

We burned a horseshoe
of permanent round circles into the rug
with our asses \u2014 a communion
of Afghani, Puerto Rican, Korean kids<\/p>\n

trying to unpeel the secrets of a mustached
plumber who swallowed mushrooms,
zapped dumb-eyed turtles, warped
to other zones through green maintenance pipes.<\/p>\n

We slept to your lullabies, the digitized
soundtrack of our childhood.<\/p>\n

Outside, a world of mothers chastising
in accents thick as static. Blocks of white boys
bored and violent, ready to snap gum,
spit, snap us in half with splintered<\/p>\n

Louisville Sluggers. Inside \u2014 Zelda
and goblins and magic wing-ed fairies.
Enemies you could throw a pot at,
stab twice, and they’d implode and disappear.<\/p>\n

10 years later, we’re split
and scattered, half college drop-outs,
Soju drunk, stumbling,
and I recall how we once fought<\/p>\n

to keep alive, counting our hearts,
freezing time to gulp Coke, taking turns
to save each other, anything, anything!
To beat them at their game.<\/p>\n

Back then, we never gave up,
never walked away \u2014<\/p>\n

if the light wouldn’t bling on,
we’d check the plug, blow into the cartridge,
\nclean out the dust, bang that sucker on any flat surface \u2014<\/p>\n

give a small push, close the door, and pray.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Park’s first book of poetry, The Temperature of This Water<\/a>, was published in August 2003.
\n[ via hello, nintendo<\/a> ]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A poem by Ishle Yi Park, the current poet laureate of Queens, NY: To Nintendo Before you, life was unbearable –a flat screen and ping<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3,4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3234","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-cheesedip","category-movable-type"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lia.bulaong.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3234","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lia.bulaong.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lia.bulaong.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lia.bulaong.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lia.bulaong.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3234"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lia.bulaong.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3234\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lia.bulaong.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3234"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lia.bulaong.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3234"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lia.bulaong.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3234"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}