poetry ✍︎

Holy Cow my fingers bleed in Van Gogh blue

The walls wear stripes nicely as the sun dresses them this evening

The Maple’s flesh is an open oven scorching the summer sky

Conversations inflate and contract, a conch shell of murmurs against my ears

My shadow is a fainting child on this February drear

Leaden days orbit around

My mind, a dwindling carousel.

O, How the hours plunk at my feet.

The clock in the hall is conveniently stalled and 

The wind wishes me raw, so I abide

The moon is just my eye’s iris bleached to match the stain on my sweater

Night flails against me like a fitted sheet in an August gust

Why do I worship the bruising of the sky? Beats me

The clock in the hall is conveniently stalled and 

The alarm to wake up has not been found, so I watch the

Leaden days orbit around.

My presence in this quiet room is an anvil falling on innocent air

Shall I take a squinted walk in stealthy sun

Allow my thoughts to fry like eggs on concrete?

O, How the hours plunk at my feet.

My girl, each second there is work to be done!

I absently do it while I presently watch the 

I miss being told “shhhhhhh, sleep tight”

      while I presently watch the 

Leaden days orbit around.

O, How the hours plunk at my feet.

This examination will consist of two sections—section A, reading, and section B, comprehension.

Section A: Reading.

Read the following cases.

a)     the term issue

legally,

citizen-ally,

I’m both of the US and the ROK

but then what does being both mean without political perimeters

I’ll have to renounce one of them soon but renounce? I know it’s just a formality but, just, it’s a formality and sometimes it’s all I can afford as a down payment on an expensive set of identities

my mom says yes, I’m both and so does my dad

although sometimes he says that I’m dangyunhi ah-meh-ri.caniji

(of course, obviously, you’re American)

miguk saram anhimyun, geurum muhni?

(if not an American, then what are you?)

when i tell him, oh but i’m korean-american, he says well yes but that term implies American in the end and i say what he always says in these kinds of situations, 

aish

                                                         (damn, rats, you got me there, noise of frustration, etc.)

b)     the language issue

i would love to stick to one side because i didn’t ask for an extra serving of humiliation and shame

         when I can’t speak it;

                                                                 i look foreign but if we were all blind i wouldn’t be,

                                                                                         native stops fricatives affricates and all

         And when I can speak it;

i look native but if they were all blind i wouldn’t be,

                                       american twang fumble and all

         either way i start to bounce my leg but,

                                             dari tteolmyun bok naganda

                           (if you shake your legs, you’ll shake the wealth right out of you)

well i’m not going to be a doctor so all the wealth that’ll shake out of me will be the thin dime i toss into a fountain, tagged with the wish of being someone true

c)     the marriage issue

whom do i marry for my family and for my cultural revival when i’m ready to pick up that package, do i marry someone American or someone Korean-Korean or someone American-Korean, Korean-American or do i leave it to the other 10.69 million Kims to carry on the country’s name and fame

                     but what about my dad’s region of surname, who will carry on the gyeongju strain?

                                                                                 Well at least i won’t let myself be a Smith

d)     the calibration-of-my-senses issue

my tongue and its demanding sense of taste jangle the bell for jangs—doenjang gochujang ganjang—and sour, sour kimchi

                               but sometimes it’s frogmore stew, how very south carolinian of me

whorls and loops on fingertips shrivel upon contact with the soft sticky humidity of monsoon season

   and adhere like velcro to liberating cool fan breezes that my dad warns will suffocate me  

nasal glands cling to sesame oil and ginseng ambrosia and sewage streets of a country that developed too fast to catch up

  but also to stale frying oil and pumpkin pie and the smell of the 9-to-5 office life in Staples

irises are regular brown, but my eyelashes point straight down

straight down to those two red white and blue flags swirling and blending into purple

eardrums melt at the touch of those fourteen consonants and ten vowels

where at each sonic brush, there’s a part of me that trembles and purrs and feels known—

the same part of me that looks through my eyes, chin leaning on one hand, fingers on the other tapping out impatience on the temporal bone of my skull when I’m being an American

—but then there’s the part of me that hears the only-in-the-case-of-an-imposter alarms go off so i hurry to evacuate the building, changing into the groucho glasses and the tan trench coat and sitting so very casually on a nearby wooden bench, watching through the hole in my old newspaper as the officials search inside for the alien

  *********************************************************************************************************************

Section B: Comprehension.

Circle the most appropriate answer for each question.  

1.     I (was/am/will be/wanna be/should’ve been/could’ve been/would’ve been) Korean.

2.     I (was/am/will be) American.

now how do i circle

“all of the above"