{"id":2322,"date":"2013-08-21T19:29:06","date_gmt":"2013-08-21T19:29:06","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/fourwaybooks.com\/site\/?page_id=2322"},"modified":"2022-10-25T12:40:48","modified_gmt":"2022-10-25T16:40:48","slug":"topaz","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/fourwaybooks.com\/site\/topaz\/","title":{"rendered":"Topaz"},"content":{"rendered":"

[column col=”1\/4″]\"Topaz\"<\/a><\/p>\n

paper \u2022 110 pages \u2022 15.95
ISBN-13:\u00a0978-1-935536-33-8<\/p>\n

Add to Cart<\/a><\/p>\n

[\/column]
[column col=”3\/4″]<\/p>\n

Topaz<\/em><\/h1>\n

Brian Komei Dempster<\/h2>\n

Winner of the 2014 15 Bytes Book Award in Poetry.\u00a0<\/a><\/h5>\n

Topaz<\/em>, Brian Komei Dempster’s debut poetry collection, examines the experiences of a Japanese\u00a0American family separated and incarcerated in American World War II prison camps. This volume\u00a0delves into the lasting intergenerational impact of imprisonment and breaks a cultural legacy of silence.\u00a0Through the fractured lenses of past and present, personal and collective, the speaker seeks to piece\u00a0together the facets of his own identity and to shed light on a buried history.<\/p>\n

“Storm Breaks,” from Topaz<\/em>:<\/p>\n

Every war begins somewhere. The boundaries\nare me: my face. smile. language. my job. No matter what I did\n\nyour father thought I was crossing him. Between\nyour apartment and mine, we stood a breath \n\napart, your mouth a border shutting out\n\ngentler words. I grabbed you by the T-shirt\nlike a bag of rice, you pushed me back, a ball of heat\n\nenveloping us. When a forest ignites, balding the hills,\nwho lit the match, who flung it into the bed\n\nof pine needles? Out the accusations came, armed\n\nlike soldiers barring the way, backing me into your corner,\nYou never bring flowers to the house. You haven't even learned\n\nto pronounce my parents' names. You don't ever bow\nand speak to my father in Korean.<\/em> And I, half-Japanese,\n\nbarely able to speak the first language of my own mother,\n\nFuck no, I don't understand.<\/em> I kicked over\nmy bottle of Old English, making shards\n\nand gold foam. Not you. Not your father.<\/em> Cicada hum\nthrough razed fields. Fists filled electric\n\nfrom our earlier lovemaking. Clouds varicosed with lightning, close\n\nto releasing. I want him to say my name, speak to me\nin English.<\/em> I ignored the siren's tornado warning. When your collar\n\nripped, I held on. Your face divided, one half\nin lamplight, the other fluttering with diamond-shadows\n\nof elm leaves. Over forty years ago. In Korea. A woman held\n\ndown. Her dress pulled up. A Japanese soldier inside. The soles\nof our shoes are sticky with liquor, crunching\n\non broken glass. What could I do? A great aunt.\nA grandmother. Your father's mother? You wouldn't tell\n\nme. The siren's next blare. My chest tightened. I looked\n\ndown at our feet, the tips of our shoes touched, squashing\nthe tuft of grass sprouting from the sidewalk's jagged\n\nfault. Where was I? Who told your father? Did he tell you?\nA man's grunts, a woman's screams. Static claws\n\nthe air, sounds become foreign. Sheaves\n\nof barley, frozen soil. Rain falls into\nasphalt's divide, our black hair damp, cicadas quieted. Beneath\n\nelms, your ribs' gentle quaking, skies webbing us\nwith tangled light. When I look back through storm-fire,\n\nwe are huddled close, smoldering.<\/pre>\n
[\/column]<\/p>\n
About the Author<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n
<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
[column col=”1\/4″] paper \u2022 110 pages \u2022 15.95ISBN-13:\u00a0978-1-935536-33-8 Add to Cart [\/column][column col=”3\/4″] Topaz Brian Komei Dempster Winner of the 2014 15 Bytes Book Award in Poetry.\u00a0 Topaz, Brian Komei Dempster’s debut poetry collection, examines the experiences of a Japanese\u00a0American family separated and incarcerated in American World War II prison camps. This volume\u00a0delves into the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"parent":0,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"advanced_seo_description":"","jetpack_seo_html_title":"","jetpack_seo_noindex":false,"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-2322","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/fourwaybooks.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/2322","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/fourwaybooks.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/fourwaybooks.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fourwaybooks.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fourwaybooks.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2322"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/fourwaybooks.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/2322\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":18297,"href":"https:\/\/fourwaybooks.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/2322\/revisions\/18297"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/fourwaybooks.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2322"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}