Angel & Hannah is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
Copyright © 2021 by Ishle Yi Park
All rights reserved.
Published in the United States by One World, an imprint of Random House, a division of Penguin Random House LLC, New York.
One World and colophon are registered trademarks of Penguin Random House LLC.
library of congress cataloging-in-publication data
Names: Park, Ishle Yi, author.
Title: Angel & Hannah : a novel in verse / by Ishle Park.
Other titles: Angel and Hannah
Description: New York : One World, 2021.
Identifiers: LCCN 2020042202 (print) | LCCN 2020042203 (ebook) | ISBN 9780593134320 (trade paperback; acid-free paper) | ISBN 9780593134344 (ebook)
Subjects: GSAFD: Love stories.
Classification: LCC PS3616.A7435 A83 2021 (print) | LCC PS3616.A7435 (ebook) | DDC 813/.6—dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020042202
LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020042203
Ebook ISBN 9780593134344
oneworldlit.com
randomhousebooks.com
Book design by Edwin Vazquez, adapted for ebook
Cover Design: Rachel Ake
Cover Images: Damian Bielak (cityscape), Getty Images (woman)
ep_prh_5.7.0_c0_r0
Contents
Cover
Title Page
Copyright
Primavera
Verano
Otoño
Invierno
Dedication
Acknowledgments
About the Author
I am a rose of Sharon
a lily of the valleys.
Like a lily among thorns
is my darling among the maidens.
~ Song of Songs
I.
Primavera
Spring
Pssst. Ven acá. Illuwah.
Let me whisper you a story.
Way back in the spring of 1993,
Hannah met Angel in the heart of Jamaica, Queens.
They were crossing Union Turnpike in da blue of the night
when they caught eyes. Froze like winter headlights.
It was shock at first sight, loud as lightning, da charge
between them nearly stopped traffic
as the city slipped away like a raw silk dress
~ stood two wingless angels, a lovely mess
but desde el primero, Love was put to the test.
Hannah kept Angel hidden from her strict parents,
nestled in his twin bed, imagined them a rebel
Romeo & Juliet
(the book slept dog-eared in her JanSport as she cradled
his head, & dreamt a wild new life: star-crossed, star-blessed).
Perfect
By second grade, Hannah learns how to please.
Sits first row, hand raised like a timid daisy.
96% on math, 100% on spelling.
Ms. Olive wants her to skip a grade.
Perfect, except when she turns mute,
when her eyelids droop like deadweights.
No one knows her father robbed her sleep,
kicking her mother at night. How she stood between,
a boxing referee, sobbing, Hajimah! Stop it.
Please…voice crumbling like chalk.
Next morning, her mother pulls Hannah’s hair
into two high, happy pigtails. Clips her OshKosh dungarees.
Be good girl, Uma asks. Yes, Uma, Hannah says, voice bright
& thin as her classroom’s sick fluorescent lights.
Little Soldier
In second grade, Angel’s a small, inept soldier,
shoved daily by Alex, one head taller, one year older,
who calls him Red-bone, Spic, Rice n’ Beans.
Cokebottle glasses enlarge Angel’s eyes as he finger-traces
words in Lassie. Bark becomes dark.
Consonants loom like pines.
He’s sunless, compassless
in the last row’s backwoods. No one
searches for him. Mr. Heller, lost in crosswords,
sips coffee. Snaps, Will ya shut up please?
All of you — heads down! Keep reading.
Under his desk, Angel breaks a pencil…
a quiet pressure of thumbs — crackk! —
Mr. Heller’s head shoots up, a startled buck —
Who did that? Silence. Alex’s spitball
grazes Angel’s ear, a white bullet.
Before Angel
The neighborhood whizzes past her. Hannah flees.
Rides her ten-speed to the bay, air tinged
with gull-squawks and salt-wind.
A tongue of rock laps into water. She
walks barefoot over crevices, stinkweed,
a stone with Tony & Gina forever inked
in Wite-Out. A rat clinks past a Heineken.
She stares out to where the sky bleeds
blue into water, to the very edge
of herself. She wishes herself there. Past
the low slurp and suck of ebb & tide,
past Apa’s backhanded slap,
fist choked with Uma’s hair, where a crescent
moon thins like a daughter pedaling into air.
Bed
Hannah lies on a bed of books at night.
She enters them, portals to escape
the sad, repressed air of her parents,
she flies on a magic carpet of words
out the window over wild, lush gardens,
to fat gold pear trees. Leaps off fire escapes,
to moonscapes where a stallion huffs
and paws at the broken silver beneath
her hooves, she feels their ghost snorts
on her neck as she nuzzles them,
the stallion crunches fat green apples, words
like duende, hearth, tribe, flute her ears…
thin book ~ spines press against her spine,
and shadowy pages billow with her breath.
Aviation
Angel goes to Aviation High School,
cuz even though he rarely leaves his hood,
he dreams of soaring sky high, a cool
legend in control of flight ~ he can
taste the sweet wind when he makes a fleet of paper planes
in class, but Mr. Heller misunderstands
his daydreams for disrespect, claims
Angel aimed the paper missiles to hit his balding head.
Suspended for three days. Teachers are all the same,
he thinks, while rolling up a Philly blunt.
He’ll get his high another way now, blowing
O’s of gray smoke out his kitchen window for fun.
Inside, he feels a small despair growing,
but keeps his guard up, no hurt showing.
Quinceañera
On Friday nights, Carina & Hannah drink Olde E’s
on a peeling green bench at 109th Street Park,
till an amber, foamy buzz blurs the dark edges of night.
They watch boys shoot hoops like lean,
heartless seraphim, then test chain-linked swings,
Nike soles pointed towards heaven,
towards star-shaped leaves. Sometimes, she wonders why they
spend sunsets preening like two peacocks,
shadows huge on an abandoned playground.
But tonight, there’s somewhere else to go, Tasha’s sweet fifteen
in St. Mary’s church basement. Hannah licks her lips,
draws on scarlet liner. She puckers.
Paints herself darker, more dangerous:
a girl who can scar in the shape of a Kiss.
Cattle
Beyond flushed, sweating bodies,
pushing like cattle below black & buzzing speakers,
under a torn pink streamer
loose as a tendril of hair — lush —
his eyes. Darkluminous. Warm. A blush
floods her. Hannah sucks in her breath, but
can’t pull back. Music fades. A hush ~
he’s a young buck in the underbrush,
still in a disco ball dance of shadow & light…
all that Ever Is, Was, Will Be —
He. A deep longing floods her.
