I Cut My Tongue on a Broken Country

• Sensing the dual loss of a divided homeland and an immigrant's life through the pain at the tip of the tongue.
• A young master's gaze suturing the linguistic disconnect and confusion of queer identity experienced by those who have left.
• The most painful yet radiant tribute to love, finally blooming within a bleeding mouth.

We move our tongues dozens of times a day. To eat, to whisper love, to curse someone. But the moment the tongue is cut, that taken-for-granted routine becomes a horrific punishment. Published in 2025, Kyo Lee’s debut poetry collection i cut my tongue on a broken country is highly sensory right from its title. Here, the "tongue" is not merely a physical organ for tasting. It is "Language," it is the "Self," and it is an instrument of "Desire" reaching out to others.

The poet is a young Korean Canadian living in Waterloo, Ontario. It is hard to believe she is still a university student, as her poetry targets the reader's wounds as precisely as an experienced surgeon’s scalpel. It is easy for the writing of young authors to drift into immature sentimentality. However, Kyo Lee’s sentences are different. Her poetry condenses the bewilderment of a stranger thrown into an unfamiliar land, along with her desperate struggle to find her roots, into a "desperate intimacy." A precarious beauty, akin to singing with shards of glass in one's mouth—that is the first impression of this collection.

The phrase "broken country" that pierces through the collection carries a dual meaning. Primarily, it symbolizes the tragedy of the Korean peninsula, severed at its waist into North and South. Yet, delving deeper, this expression points to the internal collapse experienced by immigrant families. The lives of people on the margins, who have left Korea but cannot fully blend into Canada either. That very space is what the author calls the "broken country."

The greatest agony experienced by 1.5 or second-generation diasporas is the untranslatable residue of emotions. An uncrossable river flows between the Korean spoken by the parent generation and the English of the children's generation. The author transposes this "failure of translation" into the "pain of a cut tongue." These are the moments when they had to sever the tongue of their mother language, Korean, to speak fluent English, or when they were forced into silence, their tongue scarred by the blade of an unfamiliar culture.

Added to this is her "Queer" identity, which amplifies the conflict. Traditional Korean family values and Western queer identity are like water and oil; they simply do not mix. Yet, Kyo Lee does not evade this discord. Instead, she brings in symbols like a submerged city, rabbits, snakes, and Catholic holy water to stare straight into her fragmented self. In her poetry, the tongue has been severed, but paradoxically, the blood flowing from that wound becomes a poem, speaking to the reader.

The journey depicted in Kyo Lee’s poetry is not a battle with the outside world, but ultimately a process of reconciling with herself. The "broken things" (loss, Orientalism, the collapse of religious expectations) appearing throughout the collection do not remain merely as destructive images. She attempts to speak of love again with a torn tongue. The author has chosen "language" as the thread to suture her wounds. Weaving lost memories of Korea and her present queer life together like warp and weft, she tailors and wears a new "garment of the self."

When critics say her poetry "will destroy," it is because she shatters old conventions to build new definitions upon them. The memories of girlhood, growing pains, and the shackles of family were painful to her, but simultaneously, they were the nourishment that made her a poet. Instead of remaining silent with a severed tongue, she spits out blood-laced saliva, carving her existence into the world. This is resistance, and the most fervent form of prayer.

Kyo Lee’s i cut my tongue on a broken country is not a simple coming-of-age record. One could dare say it is a eulogy for the "parts of myself" that we had to cut off and discard as we grew into adults or adapted to society. Do we not all live in a country that is somewhat broken? Do we not live with our true voices castrated to meet the gaze of others, our tongues cut by social conventions? This young poet asks the reader: Is the tongue inside your mouth intact? Are you perhaps intoxicated by the anesthetic of comfort, smiling without even realizing your tongue has been severed?

Closing the book, I reflect: there is no growth without scars. That the tongue hurts is, paradoxically, proof that I still have a sincere truth left to speak. I hope these poems handed to us by Kyo Lee—like "tender rabbit meat"—will act as a styptic balm for everyone who has hurt their tongue in a broken world. Even if the medicine stings terribly when it touches the wound, it will be an inevitable pain for the sake of healing.

The final poem concludes with hope. "It blossoms and bleeds in your hands." Blood is a wound, but simultaneously, it is life. Kyo Lee tells us:

“Even in a broken country, the tongue can speak again”

This collection is that very promise. After reading it, a sweetness lingers in your mouth. Like peaches, like a summer storm.