My name is Pardric Otuma and sometimes you might find a line from a poem or a piece of prose or something that you see written somewhere in a newspaper and that line strikes you in such a way that it creates an entire world in your imagination.

Loads of poems have an opening epigraph and I often think that when somebody opens a poem with a quote from someone else, wherever that's from,

another poet or a film or a piece of prose, that what they're doing is saying that somehow this line opened up a portal that allowed this poem to come through.

Search Engine, notes from the North Korean Chinese-Russian border by Sujia Kwa Kim.

This poem has an epigraph from Dors Grunbein, by which a strip of land became a whole in time.

Grandfather, I cannot find, flesh of my flesh, bone of my bone.

What country do you belong to?

Where is your body buried?

Where did your soul go when the road led nowhere?

Grandfather I'll never know, the moment father last saw you

opens a wormhole that has no end. The hours became years, the years forever, and on the other

side lies a memory of a memory or a dream of a dream of a dream of another life,

where what happened never happened, what can it come true comes true and neither erases the other or the

other others world after world to infinity.

If only I could cross the border and find you there,

find you anywhere, as if you could tell me who he is or was or might have become,

no bloodshot eyes or broken bottles or praying with cracked lips

because the past is past and was is not is.

Grandfather, stranger, give me back my father, or not back.

Not back, give me the father I might have had,

there in the country that no longer exists on the other side of the war. You're going to be. So this poem by Sujiguakim is addressed to the grandfather.

Grandfather I cannot find,

...