“MISSING MASKS: NAMES” also places us within the space of language(s): “Kyop’o = Overseas Korean / Omoni = Mother / Aboji = Father” (45). These two poems work to set up the fullest exploration of language in this book, an entire section called “VESTIBULARY.” In the section’s introduction, Shin provides a brief history of hangul, the Korean writing system, before describing her project: “I used the hangul characters and (the old Romanization)—their orthography, form—to create bits of narrative and images inspired by their shapes. The eros of language acquisition. We are the hunted and the hunter, submitting to the demand of the utterance” (65). Using each letter of the alphabet as the title, the poems alternate between associative lists and lyrical prose poems. From “kiyek”:

stained raw your lover's knee,
precipice;
scythe, raw grain;
late, wet harvest;
half-chair in silhouette (67).

Although I can’t replicate the orthography, you can imagine each of these lines suggesting the shape of the letter. In “hiuh,” we have a more formally complex letter:

Vocal folds open. A passage of air through the pharynx.
Puff of white.

The sound of heat, her, heart. A sparrow hops over a leaf
on a boulder. We are busy bowing to brides and broken headstones (80).

Throughout “VESTIBULARY,” the vocal folds of both languages open new narratives, associations, and meanings. The reader is balanced between the two, entering a space where the speaker submits to the “demands of the utterance.”