Poems from Korea

4 sept 2014

EARLY CHUSEOK

watching moonrise
as i eat brown rice and lentils
metal chopsticks tap on porcelain

waxing before my eyes
invisible to my north american friends
who doze in the thirteen hour lag

my moon glows
as your sun rises
i picture lamb’s quarters and queen anne’s lace
in the unmowed section of the field street garden
waving in the pink light

undeterred by clouds and bars on the first floor window
i soak up rays of the virgo moon
it washes away the vague sense of shame
which is a korean birthright
internalized confucianism
distorted into the guilt of not-having-done-enough
for abandoning my nation at the height of occupation
for losing my tongue to speak
the language of the colonizer

this is the season of self-forgiveness
in the generous glow 

of an early harvest moon

2 sept 2014

dozing on and off over dialectics

of being korean

and not

i am most integrated in air element

soaring above overheated

pacific ocean

how am i like

the ajumma flight attendants

and how not?

my hair is not permed and dyed black

i drape my bare feet rudely

in window ledges and seat arms

bunch up my skirt

so i can take my knees wide

but when my feet land on soil

i cannot help remembering

i come from revolutionary stock

impassioned and disciplined

who march in phalanxes into tear gas

and set palanquins on fire

who hunger strike for weeks

to willingly embrace the vulnerability

that connects them to the suffering

of the world

i’ve crossed the ocean

to shed yet another

colonized layer

to come down from yet another perch

of american privilege

where i could gaze from afar

and pretend the the children on the sewol ferry

had nothing to do with me

or that the lawsuit filed by the women

enslaved by their own government

for sex with american soldiers

were in fact not my mothers and aunties

being fucked by no one i know

i could insist it all happened in the past

as if the past

could be encapsulated like nuclear waste

never to harm us again

ha!

i could pretend time is linear

and not spiraling

i could numb myself with shopping

and gorge myself on waffles and iced coffee

but instead i am groggy with uncertainty

embarrassed with ignorance

tongue wrapped around broken korean

i squint at newspapers

that only leave me more confused

and remind me

that every healing crisis

begins with an aggravation of symptoms

i wait for it to get worse

before it gets better