“Dido’s Curse”

This poem is a reflection on language, empire, and otherness. It uses classical Western figures drawn from the Aeneid and the history of Rome (especially the Trojan horse and Aeneas’ experience in North Africa before arriving in Italy), structuring them around a pun on the nearly indistinguishable phonemic constructions /ma̠ɭ/ — which means both “word” and “horse” in Korean (말) — /mal/ — which means “evil,” “harm,” or “pain” in French (mal) — and /maːl/ — which means “time” or “occurrence” in German (Mal).