Three Poems
Yoomin Noh
Trending
They say my face is trending again
A girl with dark hair and dark eyes
A headline, a hashtag
“In loving memory”
Another attack, another grave
Pushed, beaten, left bleeding on the street
Was she the wrong kind of Asian this time?
Their silence is louder than their grief
I am subjugated to conversations beyond my choosing
Men call out in languages that aren’t mine-
Ni hao, konnichiwa –
Ask me which Korea I come from
As if my skin is a costume they can name
As if they can choose if I am their fear or fantasy
As if my presence welcomes their judgement
As if my turned back is an invitation to try again
I am made of more than their questions
More than their sideways glances,
Their careless hands
The blood of my ancestors rushes through me
I am from the country that still sings when silenced
From the fire of a nation that rebuilt itself from ash
From the resilience of our people in protest
From the ink of hangul carved into history
They say my face is trending again
But we are more than the stories told about us
More than they take, more than they break
We endure and we remain
She Still Sings
She folds the napkin in her lap
Forgetting she just ate
She picks up a book she used to love
Its meaning lost somewhere in time
She once stitched the finest seams
Now her fingers trace threads she no longer knows
She held my hand with warmth and strength
Now she trembles at my touch
She searches my face for a name
Finding only shadows
She smiles when I walk in
Without knowing why
She wakes to a world both near and far
Familiar yet indescribable
She hums a song about the blue bird from long ago
The lullaby that once carried me to sleep
She’s forgotten all but this
Each lyric, each note in its place
She fades, but I remain
She forgets, but I remember
She is here, yet slipping away
A whisper of love I cling to
Dear Mr. President
I wonder if the air felt different that day
Ascending the White House stairs
Its polished rail gleaming beneath your hand
The sharp angles of your jaw
The swoop of aging hair
Your skin a shade of sunburnt defiance
Did you think of Queens
Its crowded streets and borrowed dreams
Its gray sidewalks cracked with ambition
Your father’s empire sketched in the cement
His smirk you practiced in the mirror,
The clang of metal beams,
The pulse of construction,
Singing you lullabies of power
Mr. President,
Did you reminisce about your early family?
Your mother meticulously arranging her hair
Her voice a melody of immigrant pride?
Your siblings, toiling by your side
One lost to the grip of addiction?
Did that not stir sympathy in the boy suffering from emotional neglect
Cast in the shadow of a brother gone too soon?
Your hands
Small enough to be ridiculed
But capable of signing orders that moved armies
Your smile
Wide and toothy
But somehow never warm
I wonder if it aches to hold that shape
Mr. President,
Do you pause even for a moment
As the echoes of your name fade into silence?
When the lights dim and history sharpens its gaze
On the weight of a nation you promised to make great?
The applause is loud enough to drown the sound of real America.
Do you feel it now?
Yoomin Noh, graduating in the class of 2026, is a political science major with an economics minor. She is from Bergen County and has lived there almost her entire life. She likes to write and her longtime passion has always been to become a lawyer. For fun, she loves to travel and spend time with friends and family.
Yoomin wrote this poem in a course taught by Joshua November, who selected the piece for inclusion in the WHR.