TSUNAMEE

PROFILE

2011-09-05T21:16:00.000-08:00

I'm way behind in posting recent poems, and may catch up soon. But for now, here's the poem I did at the APIA Spoken Word Summit, and at the Woosh K August Slam, for those who want to read, or wanted a copy. I feel like I've been working on this poem for a year, in different drafts, but it was never clear to me what I wanted to say, so it was never clear to anyone what it said. Under pressure, I spat it out in a few days right before i was to perform. Thanks to Tatiana Ormaza for helping me revise. Thanks to those who read it, to all who support my writing, who snapped some strength to me through the first readings. Love to my adoptees, and love to my birthmother.

PROFILE
8/4/11

I wish my birth mother
had Facebook.

If she had Facebook,
my newsfeed would repeat her name
and I could know how many carrots she cut for dinner.
How the sun kisses her and skins her and calls it summer.
Whether work is slow,
     or alive and steaming,
     when it’s not just a dark square on the street and we are in a taxi pointing,
     when she is counting the till at night
     and mixing sugar into the kimchi.

She could poke me. I could poke her back.

If my birth mother had Facebook
I could know her favorite quotations.
Is she a live life to the fullest, don’t look back kind of lady?
Is she stuck in song lyrics?
     Home
     Let me come home
     Home is wherever I’m with you.
Or is she obsessed with love like it’s a blessing worth repeating?
Maybe she left it blank, like I do, because there are too many words that lift us in this world and it’s hard to nail them down.

I would stalk her mobile uploads:
samgyetang on the first dog day of summer,
her son, stooped by a street vendor, buying onions and tea.
Cabbage and radishes stretching into her corner garden,
a couple, squished together on the subway,
her new shoes.
An entire album of little moments,
her moments,
the ones she has to save.
And the glow of my screen would catch my smile
as I got to know her.

Would we both
have a photo of the fog
soaking up the sun,
like the bright haze could lift our own shadows.
Is there only one sky,
showing up on both our profiles
over and over across the ocean?

If we were Facebook friends
she wouldn’t have to call me at 4am to tell me that she’s sorry.
We wouldn’t have to blubber in broken Korean about how wholesome we’re eating.
She wouldn’t have to let her tears out, I wouldn’t have to receive them,
she could just post on my wall that she loves me, and I could “like” it.

We could invite each other to events we can’t attend and Facebook could send us birthday reminders

would my mother curse the screen every august 13th like an annual birth pain?
would Facebook remind her to breathe?

If there was Facebook on the night I was born, my mother could have asked for more courage.
Her friends commenting that they hoped everything was okay,
sending light and love
and my naked mother holding me on her blood stained floor,
skin to skin,
my fist clenched around her finger,
us, weeping together
and still a secret.

Someone, somewhere, would say a prayer for her.

Maybe she would have 811 friends.
Maybe she would have ten.
Maybe she would have closed her account,
closed her doors,
closed her heart, her laughter, her words.

Maybe there isn’t really anything to say
when you’re dressing your baby for the last time.

But I want to know.
I want to be a mobile upload, too precious to forget.
I want to hear her quaint descriptions:
how long is the train ride to the city?
what is the woman next to her reading?
does she get lost in seoul?

I want to follow her check-ins:
to the payphone,
to the social worker’s apartment.
to the alley outside, where she threw up a piece of her.

I want more than an apology.
I want to know what I was wearing.
I want to know what I was doing, what my mother’s eyes looked like as she said goodbye.
What song was playing on the radio?
How many other mothers were in that black book,
sat on that sinking couch,
handed their children away
in return for their hope?

for how long did she sleep that night?
Has she woken up
yet.

Mother,
time-drenched broken mother,
let’s not wait another 21 years for a birthday party.
for you to teach me what it means to prepare your skin at night,
to scrub our bodies before bed,
to measure a red hanbok around my waist,
and feed me a lifetime of meals in one sitting.

Forgivable mother,
this is a friend request
from a stranger,

this is a friend request
from your daughter.

16/30: PRETENDING

2011-04-26T00:24:00.001-08:00

PRETENDING

Hey, wanna know what’s hard?

Convincing your kid to get out of the car after you let him pretend to drive it.

Wanna know what’s hard?

Finding the correct hot wheel your son wants to be tucked in with when they all look the same to you and they are his unique children.

Wanna know what’s hard?

Getting a sliver out of a writhing finger, holding a hand and a needle at the same time, coaxing the pain into patience, defying the death looks, then

giving in to the tears, asking if your son wants a hug and he falls into your lap like he believes in you.

Wanna know what’s really hard?

Kissing an owie and knowing that won’t actually make it better.

Wanna know what’s hard? Parenting.
Some days my imagination is not enough.

15/30: WHAT I SHOULD'VE SAID

2011-04-24T23:51:00.002-08:00

One time I was sort of seeing this guy. After one kiss, he blessed me with a long speech about how he needed to know what I wanted because he didn't want to be a father. This totally pissed me off, which you should never do to a poet, because then they'll just write about you (a line I learned from Bao Phi). I dedicate this poem to all men who date single moms, because NEWSFLASH, we don't need you like you think we need you.

WHAT I SHOULD’VE SAID
for men that date single moms

Do you
think
I am the kind of woman
who lets love storm her judgment?
The kind of woman
who saves spaces in her sky for any
bird who kisses her?

Do you
think
I’m the kind of lover
who doesn’t respect men enough
to have favorites?
The kind of lover
who is so lonely
she’s forgetful?

What kind of mother do you think I am
that I would think
my son needs the kind of father
you think you are,
who considers this family a charity,
like we accept any donation?

14/30: SECRETS FOR SALE

2011-04-23T22:17:00.002-08:00

SECRETS FOR SALE

Just in case they’re worth something,
I’m going to start selling my secrets.

$1, When I was five I stole
orange bubble gum from
Kaybee Toys in the Nugget Mall.

$3, Some days I’m convinced
everything I own makes me look fat.

$4, In seventh grade, my smart mouth
and I were regularly sent to the principal’s office.

$5, I bite hard candies.

$8, I’m not sure I ever loved Michael,
I think I just didn’t want to be lonely.

$10, I cried most of my pregnancy.

$12, I collect dead words in my basement.

$14, I don’t actually have a basement.
I bury words in my backyard.

$15, Wish we had enough time
to see every wonder of the world
I compare you with.

13/30: IF

2011-04-23T22:16:00.002-08:00

Here's a poem I wrote just a little ways back, when I was coming out of the kind of dark and terrible place you have to be in to write a poem about remembering to live. I made a few revisions to the original rough draft so that it would kind of count as doing a poem today.

IF

If
I were in a nutshell, if
I were in a pickle, if
I were deserted or washed up or stowed away on an island, if
I were buried alive
under a garden, under a
hop scotched sidewalk, under a
silver skyscraper, and I
could hear the kickback of leather pumps like shotguns but
I could not reply with my own soft footsteps because
I was rolled up inside a bottle and
trying to find my way back to the pacific with
only the clockwise circle of my blood to guide me, if
I was out of love and
out of luck and had nowhere to turn but inside out and
even then I was just a 1000 piece puzzle someone bought at a rummage sale,
I would still hold a fork to my eye

and wish on my own glisten.
I would still fix eggs for breakfast and
tuck my son to bed with the cheap objects
he believes in.

And I would not run out of breath to kiss him,
to meet the next choked minute,
to fall into the deep end and live through it.

12/30: WINGS

2011-04-23T22:15:00.002-08:00

WINGS

You’re on a cliff.
It is appallingly, disgustingly high,
only your painful imagination can picture a ground beneath it,
and even then all you see is your desperate insides taking last breaths.
Every hundred something pounds of you are balled up in your toes, playing chicken against the ledge, your finger bones bending in ways that defy god’s anatomy, and every one of them is having a nervous breakdown against the mountain.

And if you think a poem will save you, you’re crazy.

A poem is not a rope, it is the rock.

it is not a parachute,
it is not a smaller distance,
it is not a softer ground
or even a bed of flowers to crash into,
no one will love you or not love you if you tear some petals.

it is not courage, it is not a prayer, it is just a sentence or two in the meantime.

A poem
is this sweaty granite becoming a home to your fingernails,
it is the peak you prepared too little for,
it is the haze, it is the heavens, it is the universe at her finest, pearled naked after sex and breakfast, and she doesn’t give a shit about you, you don’t own her.

So don’t waste your time waiting for a poem to change your life.

Tell me
about your romantic panic,
about the sliced up dare that put you there,
about the slip knot
in your throat
your words are climbing on.

and if you fall,
tell me about your flight,
about the flash,
about every moment your death thought
was worth re-living.

a poem aint gonna spring you wings, hon.
aint gonna get you rich.
aint gonna get you outta town
get you a prince
get you happiness

You can’t rub a poem’s belly for good fortune.
You gotta follow your life,
gotta see the crooked branches of this labyrinth tree,
the terrified potholes on this road less traveled,
the dead red roses, the bruised blue violets,

and the best you can do is revise the shit out of it and call it beautiful,
call it love anyway,

cause I don’t believe in luck. I believe in perspective.

11/30: THE BOX OUTSIDE MY DOOR IS WRAPPED

2011-04-23T22:14:00.002-08:00

When I was in 1st grade they gave me a blank piece of paper and told me to write about anything and I wrote a long list of all the things I thought might be in a secret box outside my door. I've been meaning to write a 25 year old version of that poem, write about the things that might be in a secret box outside my door nowadays. This poem is even more of a rough draft than the others, just a free write of things to set me on a path or help me figure out what I'm really doing with it. More of a placemarker so I remember to come back to it.

I'm behind in NaPoWriMo, but oh well, I forgive myself. I'm hoping to write a poem about typography later this week! Oh won't that be fun?

First grade version:
Focused Wholistic Writing Assessment
1991-1992

the box outside my dore is rapd.
I think it is a secret.
I now it is rapd up
it myt be a rabbi or a dog or a cat
or myt be somtig prity or parkafall
or it coad be something that plays music
or it myt be a ruber cat or a ruber dog or mayby
a ruber mose
or it myt be big
or it myt be little
or it myt be nentedo
or little mermaid cards or maybe close
or I myt middle size
or larg maybe close or it code by books
or something privet or speshol or veery dellacet
it may be sometig that I now in my head
or something I dont now or it myt be paper or it myt be flowers or
a bunny or a lepracon
or some pitcrs or jarnals
or appls or pumpkins or
numbers or a birthday cak or a stufd bare or
a paper with the days of the week on them or it coad be markers
or it code be sisers
or crayons or a bird
or a fore leaf clover or a
pitur of a flag
or a
pak of glue
or glitter
that is all kinds of colors
the end

Poem 11/30:
THE BOX OUTSIDE MY DOOR IS WRAPPED
Re-mixed

The box outside my door is wrapped.

I think it is a secret.

It might be a computer. Or a bus pass.

Or it might be one hundred and twenty two rubber balls
that change colors like a mood ring.

It might be a jungle
or it might be a window
or it might be a complex electrical system.

It might be a tree, too deciduous to be constant,

or it might be a Honda Civic, with an eight foot spoiler and
a 6 CD changer and
heated seats and
a manual transmission and I might
stall out at intersections
all the time.

It might be clear skies
or it might be cats and dogs
or it might be Korean pop stars
or it might be my namesake,
resurrected.

It might be a way out,
or it might be a way in,
or it might be a scratch off world map
or a wind up sushi toy

or a drunk postman,
belligerent on my love letters.

It could be seaweed.

It could be the LA Lakers.

Or it could a dictionary,

a million words too many.

10/30: NO RABBIT

2011-04-23T22:13:00.002-08:00

I liked this boy once but he told me there was no magic.

NO RABBIT

Hat on the table,
he says there's no magic and
all I have is words.

7/30: MY HEART, IN SUBWAY STATIONS

2011-04-08T07:57:00.002-08:00

MY HEART, IN SUBWAY STATIONS

It is easy to get lost, so pay attention.

Take IMPATIENCE from FIRST GLANCE to FIRST KISS,
you’ll pass MIND TRICKS and LICKED LIPS.
It will get crowded at DOUBLE GULP if you’re traveling at sunset,
that’s when everyone stops breathing.

When you do get to FIRST KISS,
transfer to WANNA SEE MY JUNK COLLECTION.
you’ll need to take the SPARKS line headed to VULNERABILITY,
not the PING PONG line headed to SIDEWALK SHOUTING,
though they look almost exactly alike.

Careful, don’t get caught up on I LOVE YOU.
It’s just a vicious cycle.

If you’re looking for SMILE ACROSS A ROOM FULL OF PEOPLE or
TEMPLE TO TEMPLE COMMUNICATION or
STEAMY SHOWER INVITATION,
try the MID-NIGHT EMBRACE line.
It’s small, but it
will get you almost anywhere you want to be.

Passes are free.
They expire after three lifetimes
or if you have an excessive amount of station transfers.

Some days we are doing maintenance on my heart to
make it more efficient,
we apologize for the delays.

6/30: HOW TO TELL IF A KOREAN WOMAN LOVES YOU

2011-04-07T06:25:00.002-08:00

HOW TO TELL IF A KOREAN WOMAN LOVES YOU

If a Korean woman cleans her mind out in the spring
and you are still in it,

she loves you.

If you buy a korean woman some flowers
and she lets them die slow painful deaths in a vase on her table,
stems limp, crispy petals weak to the most passive of breaths
and she has yet to see them lose their luster,
she smells them in her sleep,
she loves you.

If you walk out of a korean woman’s kitchen
and there is rice on your sock
she loves you.

If you’ve never seen a korean woman sing in the rain,
only recite poems from the
purple cursive of her veins,
translated verbatim
nerve after crooked nerve,

If you are a bomb
with a kindled tick
and she has not walked away,

If you find a boat in your bedroom
that she carried home from a rummaged shore
and refuses to call broken,

If her heart is the shape of the border
and some days she can’t step across it,

If there is only one comet
and only one telescope
and only one her
and only one you
and she passes the view,

she loves you,

and she can see the stars from here.

5/30: ADORABLE

2011-04-07T06:24:00.001-08:00

ADORABLE (haiku)

At the bar: Eight of
ten men here are drinking beer
and watching Batman.

4/30: GRIEF

2011-04-07T06:23:00.002-08:00

GRIEF

Grief:
a nine-headed boa
with an excellent memory.

Is it over there,
with the sharp-toothed smile?
Or here, with the wet, granite eyes?

We twist and turn
catching ridiculous glimpses,
coaxing him to free us
from this
stunning grip.

3/30: LONDON, DAY ONE

2011-04-03T15:19:00.000-08:00

At the arrivals gate,
a man in plaid
scoops up blushy children
in tweed jackets and
sun dresses and
knock knock jokes on their faces,

by the entrance,
another one,
hand in soft hand with a
boy who does not look the type
to run away,
sunnys on his
toddling nose,
as he waits for mum like a
rock star family,

number three,
scoots four kids and a
stroller onto the train car,
at least one kid screaming,
one sleeping,
he smiles at his wife,
two feet and a secret away
like any sunday afternoon.

and I am tourist-struck in awe,
fingering my camera and my American heart,
taking mental snap shots of London men
doing this foreign father thing.

2/30: PICK UP LINES FOR POETS

2011-04-02T18:32:00.005-08:00

PICK UP LINES FOR POETS

So…. do you scribble here often?

Allow me to alliterate how achingly amazing you are in the anachronistic afternoon.

I never believed in love at first draft but, reviewing you, I cant picture a single revision.

I enjoy banned books and I like long walks at the library.

Is that a sonnet in your pocket or are you just happy to see me? Is that a verb on your body? Cause I really wanna do it.

There is not a form that can contain you,

not a rhyme scheme that I want you to end on,

If you were acrostic,

I would fall into your letters,

get lost in your center,

your name would be my backbone.

I am 16 syllables and you are the one.

Baby, there aint no stem high enough,

ain’t no root low enough,

to keep me from

prefixing you.

My love,

I heard you order dinner in iambic pentameter.

I appreciate your personifications of the weather.

I’m tired of all these young similies, I want a real metaphor, someone who is.

You make the line breaks in my heart feel like a stanza.

Sit here:

next to my raven,

be a man of your word,

let me read between your lines

and highlight passages of your breath, my favorite sections.

Let’s go outside:

I will grip you like a lifetime of leaves in Walt Whitman’s grass, like tripping over Nikki Giovanni’s ego, like an amethyst rock slung by Saul Williams, like a tree between Yusuf Komunkayaa and a sniper’s bullet, like Langston Hughes’ night, like the stars, the sun, my people,

You must be an allusion!

I will invite you to my secret places,

I will spill my coffee on your corners,

I will rip you out, fold you up, carry you with me.

Solitary poet,

raise your eyes,

tuck your pen to bed,

and while all your

demons are sleeping,

Read

lips:

I will whisper synonyms into your skin like a thesaurus in heat if you will open me.

Come here.

Let me give you something to write about.

STUFF I SUCK AT

2011-04-01T20:34:00.000-08:00

National Poetry Month Challenge starts today!

Poem 1/30

STUFF I SUCK AT

Going to bed at a decent hour.

Expressing gratitude.

Being Scandinavian.

Eating only one girl scout cookie.

Emotionally detaching myself from movie characters.

Forgiving.

Cleaning my kitchen.

Sitting still.

Finding something to appreciate about offensive people.

Physics.

Looking cool while running.

Not smiling when I’m uncomfortable.

Parent groups.

Extended family dinners.

Trusting people after they’ve failed me.

Trusting people before they’ve failed me.

Apathy.

Singing quietly in the shower.

Consistently reminding my son not to climb things.

Telling nonfiction bedtime stories.

Throwing away leftovers.

Being conservative with sprinkles.

Breathing when making a wish.

Containing my excitement.

Forgetting my dreams.

Keeping a distance.

Dodging bullets.

Wanting something and not

reaching out

to touch it.

HOW A ZOMBIE MAKES A PROMISE

2011-02-24T21:51:00.000-09:00

Even as the buildings twisted,

his lips did not miss an inch,

his kisses like concrete,

slabbed against my skin,

his hands,

pulling through the wet cement

digging our initials in,

drawing a heart before I would harden.

I could hear the sirens,

the shrill sounds of last breaths,

a panicked serpent stabbing through the streets.

But he, he was a light of urgency,

a flash come my way,

like a gift in the blackout.

Of course

I was not blinded, I was blessed.

We were a mess of undone buttons,

zippers, jaws ripped open,

their teeth a bite softer than ours.

This is how a zombie makes a promise.

He whispers,

lets his tongue curl around you,

knots his limbs through yours,

grabs you eternal,

makes love like the world is ending.

When you remember to open your eyes,

you will see flames through the doorway.

When you remember to leave

to run

to be rescued

the humble floor will start to quiver.

He will sniff the pink in your flesh,

supposing how many tulips are left inside.

Your scream will be morning birds to him.

He may even hum along for a moment

as he buckles his belt at the rumbling dusk,

or he may scavenge for you, hungry,

depending on which side of the rubble he wakes up on.

Well, it’s been five hundred and forty seven days

and I have got to get out of this fuckin fortress.

This brick building made of mud, stone, and my

angry

terrified

perseverant

insatiable

joyful

spit.

Stocked with ramen and green beans and chips,

every door every crack

in my house is combination padlocked.

I have a child,

he has forgotten the word for stars.

Every now and then the zombie taps on my window with

a wink and a frothy smile.

He is running free.

He can smell the sweet cedar.

He can waste time in the moon.

He could break something, he could make something, the world is his

He has an ax in his shoulder, he doesn’t even notice.

I have a house full of ammo and more heart than I need to kill him,

but he isn’t afraid of me.

Those days,

those days

I can’t remember if I’m undead

or a survivor.

CONVERSATIONS WITH MY SON #6, #7, and #8

2010-12-27T21:36:00.000-09:00

CONVERSATIONS WITH MY SON #6: Talking Hippo iPhone App
Son: Boon! Boon! [Moon]
Talking Hippo: Boon! Boon!
Son: Lalalalalalamama!
Talking Hippo: Lalalalalamama!
Son: Mas? Popcorn?
Talking Hippo: Mas? Popcorn?
Son: Apple? Mama. Elephant. Whale! Fish! Fishing? Want Fishing?
[Son puts phone on floor and “fishes” for it with a long rectangular box]
Talking Hippo: Apple? Mama. Elephant. Whale! Fishies! Fish! Fishing? Want Fishing?
Son: Want drop? Want fall?
[Son raises phone above his head, and throws it to the ground]
Talking Hippo: Want dr bwawh bwawh bah.
12/18/10

CONVERSATIONS WITH MY SON # 7: The First Time My Son Ever Said He Loved/Lubbed Me
Me: Goodnight son. Love you.
Son: Lub YOU-UUUUUU.
12/19/10

CONVERSATIONS WITH MY SON # 8: Fishing
Son: Fishing.
Me: You’re fishing? What are you fishing for?
Son: Hot dog!
12/27/10

CONVERSATIONS WITH MY SON #5: Negotiations

2010-12-05T20:11:00.001-09:00

Me: Goodnight, Sun.
Son: Mom?
Me: Yes, Sun?
Son: Kiss?
Me: Awww yes of course. [kiss]. Now goodnight, go to bed.
Son: Mom?
Me: Yes, Sun?
Son: Kiss?
Me: Aw, well, oh, okay okay. [kiss]. Now go to bed. Goodnight.
Son: Mom?
Me: Yes, Sun?
Son: Truck?

A REMINDER FOR FATHERS WHO HAVE FORGOTTEN THEY ARE FATHERS

2010-11-27T11:12:00.003-09:00

Sometimes I weep in his absence,
at dinner, when I call for our son upstairs and
he slides down our family backwards,
his young oak smile, wise in its open knot
as he runs to me, just a girl in the kitchen
that he mistakes for the ground.

This wood flute we made together,
I weep for him, his fleeting songs,
for this poem, undeserving of words,
for the headless horseback fathers,
stabbing into the dark with dull memories,
content with becoming ghosts.

Yet my child, son of the wind,
blows around the room a boundless toddler,
collector of questions,
and he asks none
of his mother’s love,
pausing only seconds
for these promising kisses,

for he is tear-free and peaceful,
and he has no sense of loss.

CONVERSATIONS WITH MY SON #4: Bath

2010-11-19T23:33:00.000-09:00

Me: Sometime tonight you need to take a bath. 
Son: Noooo! Noooooo! Noooo no no no no no no!!!! [wails, flings himself face down on the floor, kicking] 
Me: Duuuude. Not right now. I mean, later. 
Son: Oh.

CONVERSATIONS WITH MY SON #3: Saying Hi

2010-11-19T23:32:00.003-09:00

[Man standing with his back to us. Son is excitedly waving to him]. 
Me: Baby, you have to wait until someone looks at you before you wave to them. He's not looking at you. You gotta wait till he sees you, Then say hi. 
Son: Why?

MADE

2010-11-19T23:31:00.001-09:00

My friend NaHaan was telling me one day how he thinks there should not be a difference between poetry we write and poetry we speak, so whenever we speak, it should still be poetry. So sometimes I throw poems into our fb conversations.

CONVERSATIONS WITH MY SON #2: Mama's Boy

2010-11-06T11:14:00.003-08:00

CONVERSATIONS WITH MY SON #2: Mama's Boy

Me: Hey Sun, can I get a hug?
Son: Trucks!
Me: You want to play with your trucks? [son nods]. Can I get a hug first?
Son: No. Trucks.

[age 20 months]

CONVERSATIONS WITH MY SON #1: Dreams

2010-11-06T11:13:00.003-08:00

Now that my son's talking more, Imma start a new "poem" series of our conversations.

CONVERSATIONS WITH MY SON #1: Dreams
[Son wakes up]
Son: Ishaw Ishaw Eshaw Ishaw 
Me: You saw?  
Son: Ishaw! 
Me: What did you see? 
Son: Ball. 
Me: You saw a ball? [son nods] What else did you see? 
Son: Moose. Cheese.

[age 20 months]

CARHARTS, RAIN JACKET

2010-10-14T21:43:00.004-08:00

Have you heard "Short Skirt, Long Jacket"by Cake? No? Well you should! It's a great song.

Anyway, here's my alternate version, which I'm calling CARHARTS, RAIN JACKET, and perhaps is partly an ode to Juneau men. :D

CARHARTS, RAIN JACKET
after Cake’s “Short Skirt, Long Jacket”

I want a man with constellations in his ear drums.
I want a man with long attention.
I want a man who is not sure what to order,
treats the waitress like a princess, and leaves a big tip.

I want a man with intercultural charisma.
who loves like he means business
and makes last requests.
He is not afraid to get dirty:
He is covered in fish guts,
He is fist up in protest,
and knee deep in my heart.

I want a man with carharts and a rainnnnn jacket.

I want a man with a waterproof smile.
I want a man who always knows where we are.
I want a man who has time for breakfast
who got something scrambled and sees the sunny side up.
He brings home the bacon.
And flowers and hitchhikers and cellphone pictures of the sea.

He is not afraid to get dirty:
He is covered in fish guts,
He is fist up in protest,
and knee deep in my heart.

I want a man with carharts and a rainnnnn ...rainn...... jacket.

I want a man with a marathon imagination
I want a man with bare feet on the earth
He is walking by me at Fred Meyer, he has somewhere to go,
he is in a hurry but he asks me my name.

He is well dressed for a Friday.
He is buying onions, tomatoes, and oreo cookies.
He asks my son for a fist pound and
says he loves this weather, partly cloudy, fifty five.

I want a man with carharts and a rainnnnnnnnnnnnnnnn jacket.

I AM BUILDING YOU A BOAT

2010-10-09T21:25:00.003-08:00

(For my friend, Megan, on her wedding day.)

I am building you a boat.

It is the cedar of my sun-kissed ambition,
five million rings wide,
a promise inside a promise inside a promise
and this
is the space I carved
for you.

Please.
Sit down.

I am gluing language dictionary pages together,
I am making sails.
I raise them, into the breeze of your gaze, I have so many things to tell you,
and I cannot find the words.

These,
these are my lost hands,
pulling against the ropes,
covered in paint, color of the horizon,
a clench disguised.

But you, lover like the light,
seek me out,
unfold me in the afternoon,
open me amongst the waves,
and I am drawing a map of
every corner of this earth
you touch me in.

My dear,
I am drawing a map
of the universe,
a stormy, starry place
we will sail through,
if you
will sail through it
with me.

ADVICE

2010-10-06T23:05:00.003-08:00

Dear women,
Get him now, while he is still a hopeless romantic.
Now, while he will still cross the nation for you.
Now, while he wraps memories in flowers,
while his heart still has room,
while he is in the mood to find words in your hair,
braid them together on a roadside,
on a boat,
in a basement
somewhere.
There, at that moment,
should you have a chance,
you should love him.

I AM FROM

2010-09-10T09:13:00.003-08:00

Our Juneau Writers of Color group is gonna meet this weekend so I thought it'd be fun if we all did an assignment, did the classic "I AM FROM" poem (prompt credited to George Ella Lyons, I believe) to share. It was kind of a selfish assignment because really I'm just forcing them to speed date with me for a moment, tell me where they're from, what makes them who they are, at least at this point in their lives. The last time i did an I AM FROM poem it was like my first year of college and where I was from Then is very different than where I'm from Now. It's interesting to think about how where we're from isn't just a cumulative list of experiences, they're weighted so that some stuff seems bigger, feels heavier, takes up more room than other stuff at different points in our lives. Well, here it is, proof I did my homework, current stuff taking up room in my life:

I AM FROM

I am from combat shopping day after Thanksgiving, sun still feasting on dawn, my mother coaching us in the parking lot:
Grab whatever looks good, think about it later. Be quick, travel light. Socks are half off.

I am from brown hair, black hair, pepper, pennies, sunrise, strawberry blonde locks,
gossiped and snipped, pieces of other people’s beauty as of yesterday,
their rich wigs, fallen to my mother’s spare change feet, kissing the ground she walks on.
I am from the daughter of daughter of hairdressers,
of gentle hands at your pressure points.

I am from May the LORD make His face shine upon you, and be gracious to you; the LORD lift up His countenance to you, and give you peace!

and I am from god damn peaceful people,
who choose to say nothing
if they have nothing nice to say,

so I am from begging the LORD to love me anyway.

I am from high school sweethearts married almost 40 years now, whose sole concept of hurting each other’s feelings is not being able to find the other person at Costco.

I am from heroes, who I never saw in their normal clothes until I was grown.
I am from ripping them apart, searching for their capes.

I am from
the single tear a woman lets herself cry only once a year,
rolled along Seoul’s sewer system,
carried by rat to the coast,
shaken off hands wiped clean.
I am from a drop
a ripple
a storm
gaining strength across the ocean,

I am from destruction
from men at their knees
from frantic mothers, their children’s names an endless echo,
and a sore prayer in the throats of presidents,

and I am from not knowing my own strength,
reaching out to touch him and my wave breaking legs,
I crash, just wanting to lap at his ankles.

I am from two hundred thousand sunken ships,
our treasure lost at sea, and like ghosts
we haunt the streets of our homeland,
looking for what’s ours,
I am from passing our hands through solid objects as we name them.
Korean men and women,
maybe our brothers and sisters,
stare straight through our accent,
our american hips,
our histories,
so we can not tel
lif we have really come back
or not.

I am from abandoning myself.
From tucking me
in a basket, floating down a monarch vodka river,
From leaving me
at doorsteps, in backseats, under silk sheets, between body heat.

I am from two driftwood twigs paler than they ever were,
softer than they appear,
broken from a weeping tree somewhere,
and I am from the fifteen year old haphazard love making of their edges as they
rub together like they were meant to be fire,
limbs in a collision rhythm.
See I am not from sparks,
I am from friction, from smoke, from a slow burn that scars you from the inside.

I am from a dream left open and men like happy thieves
I am from a pirate wife’s life, who let him steal from me.
and I am from mutiny,
from a plank made out of fingernails I pulled from our hearts.
And I am from the watch tower on starboard side at sunset,
wide awake, with death grips on a pistol,
on my steel child not to be confused with bullets,
and old poems I quilted into a white flag,
some days we raise it.

I am from the Queen of Spades,
the Ace of Hearts,
the Five of Diamonds.
I am nothing. I am royalty.

Pick me,
put me back,
shuffle me, cut me,
let me be found.
I am magic, I am from tricks.

THE CARVER

2010-09-02T23:01:00.005-08:00

A First Nations man, a fifth generation carver, was shot four times by a Seattle police officer on Monday when he was walking with his folded knife and a block of wood. I wanted to write about how it was not an isolated event of police brutality, or even brutality in general against indigenous people. Likewise, there is something poetic and devastatingly symbolic about the perceived threat of the knife of a carver to this police officer. Is it the carver, or the tradition of carving, which cuts and heals simultaneously? Anyway, late night questions.

This is my attempt at articulation of my anger, and actually deserves better attention than my rough Thursday poem habits of just typing whatever comes to mind, but at least something's out there, and we can talk about it. Good night. Christy

THE CARVER
For John T. (“Trouble”) Williams

Dear John, you’re Trouble, I love you.

Your grin in the sidewalk,
your sidestep stagger, a spin,
I am your lady,
you are my duke,
let’s be rich until midnight.

Dear John, you are two thirty, I love you.
Open your eyes, see me in
my torn threads as I
de-sparkle,
glass slippers, one slipper, barefoot as you blink.
Now we are dancing servants,

and we are early.

John, time’s got a joke in your drink,
take a swig and laugh it backwards,
I love you in every generation.

Dear John, Father of John, Father of Father of
John, Father of Father of Father of John,

with knives as hands,
cut across a block of wood like sons
whittled into bears, into birds,
into brave beasts.

With knives as hands, I love you.

This ribbon world, shred it.
Spiral it to your touch.

Me, my drunk passion for you,
prick my finger, make me promise.

Dinner, a lavish processed plate,
divide it, take what you need, leave it, share it.

The day, cut and paste the hours,
dream at noon, stumble in somewhere
when you are not welcome,
where you are not welcome,

The welcomers, scrape heart scars onto their chest, lest they forget.

Your feet, slash the bottoms, a trail to your mother, go home.

And in the city park garden, carve your name into the woodwork,
your father’s name, all their fathers’ names, carve their wives’ names, their children’s names, your clan names, the animals that make you cunning, the wind directions that you make tremble, carve it all, give it a new shape, an old shape, leave a reminder,

because today, my love,
today they will yell into your bad ear,
they will demand that you drop your knife to the ground,

and they do not know.
They do not know how your knife holds me safe against nightmares,
how it held out tokens, how it opened trees into stories,
how you were born with the family glint,
how it healed a man to know where he came from,
they think it’s something you can let go of.

And you will not surrender,
you will fall to pieces.

You will not be put back together.

John,
the police are looking for witnesses.
But they will not find them in the park,
his and her recollections of a few spare minutes.

Who will tell them how you loved?

That these are not your king’s horses.
That these are not your king’s men.
This was not a wall you fell off of.

It was tradition.

EQ Show in Minneapolis, Sept 25th!

2010-08-29T21:38:00.001-08:00

Of course we all know Equilbrium is a leader in racial justice work, but congrats to them, and to the Minnesota Council of Nonprofits for honoring them with the Anti-Racism Award!!

I'm totally honored and stoked to help kick off their 8th season. If you're in Minneapolis, do check out the show.

Thanks, also, for getting the word out about the transracial/transnational adoptee spoken word workshop I'll be doing. Spaces are now full!

And big ups to co-sponsor AK Connection, and to Bao for the mean flyer.

HAIKU GIVEAWAY DAY II

2010-08-14T21:28:00.005-08:00

Had another haiku giveaway day for my Thursday poem this week. Wrote a haiku for anyone who asked for one. I had a couple requests, too, like "a limitless haiku" and a "climber haiku", which is fun cause it makes me feel (as Tim put it) like a Haiku DJ.

The first one, for my son, is probably my favorite.

DIEGO'S SKILLSAW: Your saw is so skilled / carved this knotted wooden heart / into a hope chest.

HIGHWAY SASHA: Your Way is so High / They call you Bridge now since all / the people look up.

BRANDON’S LOLLIPOP: Your lolli’s so popped / that center looks too good to / count licks on the way.

PADRA’S TEARDROP: Your tear’s so dropped / even your scary sad days / get down like they’re hot.

BIG WHEEL STEVE: Your wheel is so big / everywhere you turned I just / had to roll with you.

ANN’S WINGSPAN: Your wing is so spanned / the kids called it an earthquake / as their ground took flight

STEEL STRING TREVOR: Your string is so steel / stretched between mountains you walk / no fear, just music

MEGAN’S LIMITLESS HAIKU (as requested): Your hug’s seventeen / syllables playing tag on / your arms, still running.

COURTNEY AT LIGHT SPEED: Your light’s so speedy / somewhere between here and your / hope, the dark gave up.

TGIF THANK GOLD IT’S FRIDAY: Your day is so fried / Everything that you do is / frickin delicious.

CHRISTY’S SOFT COVER - Your cover’s so soft / they read you at night just to / hold you in their hands.

PHOEBE’S FREE REFILL: Your refill’s so free / no one in the room can feel / empty around you.

ALICA’S SUN SCREEN - Your sun is so screened / it prints on people like a / designer label.

TIM’S WALLFLOWER (a climber haiku, as requested): Your wall’s so flowered. / Jealous, gravity saw you / and moved the ground there.

REAL SIMPLE SARAH - Your simple’s so real / stressed-out fairies and dragons / pop you like a pill.

KATIE’S COOL SHADES: Your shade is so cool / the sun wears your shadow on / Fridays out dancing.

CACHET ON THE NORTH SLOPE: Your slope’s so North / you let it take its course but / it always points home.

KATIE’S STREET LIGHT:   Your street is so lit / the word on it burnt holes the / dead keep wishin on.

STACY’S BRIGHT SIDE: Your side is so bright / ‘course your grass is greener, ‘course / we wanna be there.

HILARY’S GRILLED CHEESE: Your cheese is so grilled / every smile got that burnt flipped / look that’s addicting.

COLIN’S MUD SLIDE: Your slide’s so muddy. / You know life’s more fun if you / get a lil dirty.

SWEET TOOTH ANNIE: Your tooth is so sweet / that even the cuspids chew / nice when you’re around.

STEM CELL HELEN: Your cell is so stemmed. / Like any cage, you can just / flower out of there.

PATCHWORK MALIA: Your work is so patched / the broken places are what / make the quilt gorgeous.

NO MAGIC

2010-08-08T22:12:00.007-08:00

When the dragon kissed the prince
there was no magic.

Her tiger lips not like lilies
jumped through a ring of fire
to plant a whisper big enough a
tale could hide in when it grows up
but it didn’t grow up, it vanished.

And his smile stretched from the living room to Point Lena
so she walked along the rift that was his molars
until she stood on the crest of his rocky grin,
daring him to bite her,
he daring her to jump
and she jumped,
landed only on her sofa.

Something was so funny
that one hundred fireflies flew
from their breath and they
tried all night to catch them
but they only caught one,
and even it stopped blinking.

The prince sang and the dragon danced.
A fairy godmother captured it on her iWand,
uploaded it to her youtube channel and it
had a million hits by morning.
Lovesick wishers everywhere tried to replay it
but in the playback
there’s no music.

Skin to skin they were an ocean.
She counted his fish,
he lay in her depths,
the tides carried them home.
But even home was not close enough.

Back on land he looked for his tshirt
and they parted ways at an open door on a hillside.

Halfway down, she tripped on a squid.

SPINELESS

2010-08-06T08:30:00.004-08:00

Name your night I will find your favorite color in the sunset.

And I am not so mighty of a woman that
I could claim to cut a high
piece for your bedside
or keep any soft ray of it
in my hand safely, but I
would see you in this light for a moment:

let my eyes maze through its lines your lines
our lines, the cleanest shades of gray
pink lavender blue whale white falsetto,
wrapped around over under
its tired chest, and I will
memorize the sharp shape
of your face turned upward, the sky
smiling spineless on your gaze.

LIKE ANY AMERICAN MEAL

2010-07-29T22:17:00.008-08:00

I feel like a lot of spoken word artists of color have a "kitchen poem", and it's usually rich with images of their culture, and almost always involves their mother. I've been wanting to write a "Korean Adoptee kitchen poem" for awhile now, because I think many White people tend to imagine "cultural" pieces as "non-White" pieces. That's a tough thing about racism, that White culture is so pervasive and institutionalized to be "normal", that we forget that White culture is a culture too, and not just a backdrop against all these "other" cultures. So drawing attention to pancakes and jello dishes when many artists of color are writing about salty/spicy/"exotic" dishes in a language other than English, seems really really fun to me. And growing up a Korean girl in a White kitchen is its own poetic adventure too, of course! This poem doesn't feel finished to me, but here's a draft anyway for Thursday.

LIKE ANY AMERICAN MEAL

Ho’s father can make the meanest bowl of noodles,
beef on boil for two lovesick days
until every stubborn chunk of it
lets go of their bones and falls
to the good graces of the water.

Y la Mama de Francisco makes tamales
as if corn were lottery tickets.
She picks the gold off the Pasadena summer,
steams it until all the neighbors feel rich,

and for a year I watched Shaquanda raise her voice
so no one could hear her breaking.
She never hugged her children,
but she fried chicken
like she believed in it.

Well my own Irish mother from the heartland,
she whipped bisquick and milk with the best of them
and we ate pancakes sunday mornings,
looked just like the picture.

She had a cake pan, shape like a dome
and every daughter used it at least one birthday,
plopped the top half of a blank barbie in the center, and
my mother worked for hours frosting her into life,
piping each ruffle like small miracles, every color,
and it wasn’t about the princess,
it was the dress.

Halibut, she would switch off, sometimes
fried in the depths of angry oil, sided with tart yellow sauce,
sometimes slow baked, blanketed
in soft mayonnaise, full fat sour cream, a whisper of paprika and
bread crumbs, yes,
I could follow it home.

She has learned, over the years,
to buy white bread, because that’s what the rich people buy,
to buy wheat bread, because that’s what the rich people buy,
to buy all natural organic bunny crackers
but only once, because they taste like cardboard.

And when someone else
made a competing jello dish at Christmas,
we each still ate a serving to be polite.
Though we hailed our mother at home later,
silent pride was our tradition.

I was never my mother’s Korean daughter
just her daughter daughter,
so she steamed minute rice from
an orange box with a white uncle on it,
reached into the freezer some evenings
and pulled a costco bag of vegetables with
STIR FRY scrawled across like a kung fu movie,
like a battle between water chestnuts and snow peas,
and in a different life, my mother may have
high-kicked them into bits between blinks.

But in our family,
she gently sprayed a pan with PAM
fried them over medium heat,
shook only enough soy sauce to barely brown them,
and stirred like any American meal,
except she secretly knew
that this one,

this one
was my favorite.

THE VIEW

2010-07-22T23:53:00.010-08:00

i.
I had a gun it was shaped like love
except it didn’t tremble.

It gave me warmth as I walked across campus,
concealed under my eyelashes.
My looks could kill.

And peace was a white thing.
An enemy in blue jeans standing on the corner of Snelling with a raw food smoothie and a sign thing.
I couldn’t hear anyone
over the nuclear bomb in the room
so I yelled for the hell of it,
sent my words out like kamikaze bombers
or gardeners in the wrong garden,
rocking plants suckin on radiation water,
dying fatherly deaths.

I was ready for war,
even as my brass knuckled belly grew large.
The revolution was pregnant
and armed

and unarmed

and armed...
the color of Joseph’s coat in my naked embrace,
a soft sword
as he saved me,
and i split open, imagining
how we’re gonna win this
with his skin my skin and our breathless connection.

ii.
I had a lover he kissed like columbus.
A tongue like three ships
and he smelled like used cannons
but he bore gifts.

We threw so many starfish back into our bed
we skinny dipped slept with good intentions
until the waters churned with his deep dark curses
and I had to wake him before he murdered
someone in his dreams.

He has 9 scars and only 7 stories.

He went to jail he got out of jail he called me from a pay phone
said my eyes were like all four seasons
and he buckled in the parking lot talking bout
spring.

iii.
I had a son he thought I was the sun.
He woke up and looked over
and if I rose the day had begun.

Some mornings I was so angry
i burnt myself to a crisp
and my charred lips
could not even offer a
faint kiss
without breaking.

So we slept in,
letting life fake it.
Gonna be brave
just gimme a minute.
I dropped cast iron fists on my forehead,
hope somewhere in the squeezed hot middle of them

and my son,
who does not miss a bird,
a single ray through the curtain,
or a heart worth breaking,
cocked his head like a horizon
and squinted through my grip.

He’s still there,
smiling on the bedside, waking.

MORNING STORIES

2010-07-15T21:29:00.005-08:00

I feel like this could be a good idea. I wanna be this kind of mom.

MORNING STORIES

Good moms read books at bedtime,
Great moms tell morning stories.

Where there are no mice to say goodnight to the moon
only bright eyed salmon hatching without their mothers, tasting
the width of the water with their clumsy thirst.

They are waking, at the break of the fog,
and there is so much to say.

How a boy can row to shore on his tricycle,
greet the robots with smoked halibut and jellybeans,
he can dance with the best of them, he can
ride the hills until the hills are tired, until they
blow their sand like a silk dress around the sun and the
sun wears it to work all day and everyone wants to
comb her rays and look for treasure.

Oh, good morning.

Did you hear about the prince who was not a prince
just a mailman with a river of love letters and he
slept on a feather there, dipping his toes in
promises and pictures and signatures
so that when he walked in triangles his footsteps left
everlasting bricks until they were pyramids.

Open your eyes, baby,

There’s a dinosaur outside our window and he
picked all the neighbors flowers with his teeth
while they were sleeping and he
took a shower in their sprinkler and they
wouldn’t have known but he started singing so
Mrs. Bingham is banging her Toyota Sequoia
against his ankle and it tickles.

Wake up! See the T-rex laughing.

He can’t help but catch his breath and start a tornado.
We are flying, here in our small white apartment,
the plants, the books, the couch, the dishes,
shooting like stars in our living room,
and we could make a thousand wishes but
i only wish one, you only wish one:

I roll my shocked body over yours and ask for peace,
but you, you
hold out your brave young arms
and I and every scared stuffed animal
fit there.

Let the day begin.

MY SON RUNS IN RIOTS

2010-07-08T22:26:00.008-08:00

Well, another f'd up moment in american history. My heart and grit teeth go out to the family of Oscar Grant, another victim of police brutality and the legal system. This week's poem is for him, for all of them, for the fight. No justice, no peace.

More info: http://colorlines.com/archives/2010/07/oscar_grant_verdict_merhserle_guilty_of_involuntary_manslaughter.html

MY SON RUNS IN RIOTS
for Oscar Grant & other warriors

I don’t use playpens,
my son runs in riots.

He took his first steps towards burning buildings
and he carried a molotov cocktail in his right,
draggin his blankie in the left gripped tight,

half soft-brushed cotton, half tear-stained satin,
he lets the tail gather the dirt and screams of the street,
he can’t sleep without it.

When I sing lullabyes
we are often running
and he keeps up cause
he loves the sound of twinkle twinkle
little star
to fire alarms.
He think ashes are diamonds in the sky.

I breast-fed for a year,
as recommended,
and weaned him to household chemicals.
We are only as strong as the bomb we mix
and my son’s lungs glisten.

Listen
I don’t want another language to be lost
so I whisper the traditions of tamed lions
I grip his wrist
for his attention
I purr the words
how we were told we could not be wild
and i clench his shoulders
and i hold him
and I told him
they said we were not real lions
they said they were not real gate keepers
they said the cage would not come between us
they said this was justice
and i swore for whatever mother this earth was supposed to be and i said,
the truth. is.
we are free.

Unlike me,
he didn’t pause at the thought.
My son stood up
sucked on a switchblade and
took off.

He met men with gray hearts and silver badges
and he has
bullets in his back,
he has
bullets in his front,
he has 56 baton blows, six kicks in his ribs and

when you watch the video
it’s tough to tell whose son it is.

2010:
all my children cry tear gas.

JUNEAU GIRLS DO IT IN THE RAIN

2010-07-05T19:45:00.005-08:00

On the books it says it rains 300 days of the year here in Juneau, on average. Of course I think there's something beautifully poetic about the strong women I know who live here with firey hearts despite the weather (climate weather and life weather and all that). This is an ode to them.

But it's just a draft. I asked my friend Naa Haan, an incredibly talented writer and fellow Juneauite, to write a "boy" version - juneau boys do it in the rain - that can be re-mixed into a collab spoken word piece, so I'm pretty excited about that. Stay tuned.

JUNEAU GIRLS DO IT IN THE RAIN

Juneau girls
clap their hands when they’re happy
and they know it,
they wear
hand me down boots of their brothers
over popsicle print leggings
and they walk the block
humming lady gaga singles
slug hunting
in the rain.

Juneau girls,
they rarely look both ways before crossing,
they share their french fries,
they made up a game called Manhunt and they are standing in the rain in the neighbor boy’s yard
trying to convince him to play.
They know everyone in their apartment building,
they know why the police came,
they pinky promise in the rain.

Juneau girls would still call their fathers if their car broke down in the rain
and they sneak out and meet boys that they think love them in the rain.
Juneau girls wear tshirts their mother bought them for christmas and they spill
cheap tequila on them in the rain.
They dance like rock stars at a campground in the rain, head thrashed so that water shoots from their hair and fades like faraway fireworks.

They don’t always wear their seatbelts.
They must leave their best friends, walk a mile in blood stained sneakers.
They throw their heart up on the asphalt in the rain
and someone downtown feels the earth pulse.

And Juneau girls become women
and Juneau women cry only until dinner.
They walk careful down a mountain in the rain,
and they don’t all believe in God, but they believe in prayers,
and they
whisper in the rain.

Juneau women look into the eyes of Juneau men
and they want to mine there.
Juneau men trace the jawline of Juneau women
and they want to follow it like a coast.
Juneau men drop their roots into the hungry ground,
and Juneau women slink around them like a long lost breeze,
blowing centennial kisses into their knots
and they fall down in the forest.
and they are breathless
and they are rescued
and they are a song to be sung
and they sing it in the rain.

Juneau women leave their shell open to hermit crabs in the rain.
They do moon salutations in the rain
and when their downward dogs come up,
the mud is stuck to their palms,
the world is in their hands
and they do it in the rain.

Juneau women know when a home becomes a house,
when a storm becomes violent
when something is too broken to be fixed,
and they take their children out with no jackets in the rain,
cover them only with their shoulders and faith.
Juneau women shake their wings in the rain
and they fly higher.

Juneau women hide pills from other women in the rain.

Juneau women can watch sunsets alone in the rain.

Juneau women finger their ribs in an inlet with no wind,
draw one out, and paddle home in the rain.

Juneau women build fires in the rain.
In the drizzling rain, in side stinging rain,
in bone chilling heavy eyelid rock slide rain,

and they listen to it slip into the flames
like a harmony.

SHE HAD SOME DRAGONS

2010-07-01T23:24:00.003-08:00

SHE HAD SOME DRAGONS
after Joy Harjo's, "She Had Some Horses"

She had some dragons.

She had dragons who were clenched tree trunks.
She had dragons who were smoke ghosts.
She had dragons who were palm rocks, stacked into wishes.
She had dragons with wave tumbled skin.
She had dragons with desperate teeth and they bit their daughters.

She had some dragons.

She had dragons who swallowed swords because they liked the taste.
She had dragons who hunted the ground for quarters.
She had dragons who reached through the fog to touch her.
She had dragons who flew backwards into the sun, who could not look at their mothers.
She had dragons who ate other dragons
for breakfast.

She had some dragons.

She had dragons who made love in a math equation.
She had dragons who made love in a corolla.
She had dragons who made love in an earthquake, in a falling building, in a corner someone told her was safe.
She had dragons who disappeared under pressure.
She had dragons who found adventure in books, who raised their hands only to turn pages, who kissed like heroes.

She had some dragons.

She had dragons who woke up to a war, who cut the steel springs from their mattresses and planted a field of bullets for their children.
She had dragons who moved rice grains with only their chopsticks, stacked them into mountains.
She had dragons who climbed these mountains, with bricks on their back to build a village at the peak.
She had dragons who thought they died alone.

She had some dragons.

She had dragons who broke into barbed wire gardens.
She had dragons with cold blood, who could wrap around her in a hurricane, turn the temperature of her hope.
She had dragons with warm blood, who knocked at her door with black eyes and cut knuckles, fire spitting from their wounds, and it burnt to touch them, to heal them, to love them,
but she was not afraid.

She had some dragons.

She had dragons who made language their tank, who held a room captive.
She had dragons with stone eye replacements.
She had dragons who blew kisses into the dark to torch the way.
She had dragons who missed her.
She had dragons who did not know her.

She had some dragons.

She had some dragons with winged backs.
She had some dragons with lead hearts.

These were the same dragons.

MONSTER UNDER THE BED

2010-06-24T21:40:00.003-08:00

A friend of mine is going through some rough stuff, bad stuff, with her baby daddy and it's dredging up all this crap in my own heart. This poem's part my experiences, but it's a collage of other women's experiences, too, all of whom have been dear to me, and all of whom have also found themselves wrapped around a man (or several men) who was abusive - either physically, emotionally, mentally.... and, not knowing the real name, we called it love. But it's really a:

MONSTER UNDER THE BED

If my son found the monster under the bed,
I’d say:

Some monsters are hard to kick out
so I let him live here.

On the plus side,
He has a great smile.

And he can cook!
Boy, when he cooks I could eat an army,
but I don’t.
Cause I try to set a good example.

But what I’d know
is that monsters have short term memories.

They can’t remember who punched those
moon craters into the wall.
Or halfway through a sentence, when
it got so loud, so goddamn loud in this house.
Why are you lying there, at the bottom of the stairs,
singing songs to your crimson tide womb.
Why did you make them choke you hit you pull you push you like that.
Who threw that lamp.

They don’t love you.
Wait.
They love you. More than anything.

Minutes, days, weeks with holes in them.
I wonder how monsters keep track of time this way.

My monster,
he has all the time in the world anyway.

He hovered there like
A drunk angel
watching me
sink through the cement,
my knees so weak,
my heart so heavy.

He was on my back
as I limped outside,
parting a smile through my river of tears,
a joker,
a joke.

No matter how far I swam
to drown my thoughts,
throw the things I’ve said the things I’ve done
into the water like farewell ashes,
my monster was the end of the ocean,
calling me closer.

And I can’t get the sound of his choked voice
out of my room.
The sawing of his lips as he begged for forgiveness,
held me tight like his arms could squeeze me into
something softer,
cried kissed cried kissed
into my granite forehead,
and I broke enough
to let a little of his toxic hope in.

So he lives under the bed.

I don’t want my baby to know.
I hold him close,
closer than a safe boy wants to be held
kiss him more than strong boys want to be kissed,
tuck his feathered head into my chest,
and I never fall asleep before he does.

I curse the monster for being there,
for sinking his teeth into our lives,
for twisting my love into a boomerang bullet,

And I watch my son drift to dreams in my arms

Unafraid,
as he should be.
as his mother could be.
if only she
could let him go.

DRUNK WHITE BOY I HEART YOU

2010-06-17T11:05:00.001-08:00

A friend was telling me about having a good time downtown except some drunk white mofos messing with his cedar hat, and I'mma thinking, same ol same ol. Many drunk white people are not like this. But there's a good handful of these boys that seem to always be alive and well.

Anyway, I wrote a pretty brutally honest piece earlier in the week (may post later...) so I tried to keep this one light, for myself at least. Maybe later I'll add more drunk white boy whack ass examples (I have plenty), but I'm not up to going down those tough roads this Thursday. Enjoy.

DRUNK WHITE BOY I HEART YOU

Drunk white boy,
I heart you.

Let me count the ways!

Kick start jump and you’re up
hand standing on a grey keg with
beer foaming at your mouth,
you tiger you
you wild thing you.
Marley shirt fallen at your neck,
your balsa wood chest flashing flabby,
just the kind of man I look for
these long, lonesome nights.

So you wanna take
long walks on the sidewalk,
kiss my ground with your leinenkugel,
drape an easy arm over my shoulder
like a hit single.
And baby I’m amazed by you.
Do that hop onto every parked car thing again.

Keep drinkin, I’m swimmin, and you’re so deep.
Maybe General Vang Pao did invent sriracha sauce.
Yah I get it, I got the fever.
You loved Korea because you slept with so many Korean girls?
I love Korea too!
We have so much in common.

YES, I text back.
Let’s definitely get married.

Oh, drunk white boy,
where you been all my life?
No one can say hello to me in 3 Asian languages like you can.
No one calls me Ming like you can.
No one tells the boy I came with about the baseball bats in the trunk like you do.
Your penis is so much bigger. I know it.

Across your dank and dirty basement,
I only have folded eyes
for you.

Cheers.

TWO TIMES THE GIRL

2010-06-13T09:51:00.001-08:00

Too tall of a girl flying off the yellow bus,
same bleach sparkled shirt,
pushes clara, who she desperately wants to be friends with,
spits into the grass, and
since she’d wrinkled a good impression,
spits again cause she knows I hate it.

But she got a joker crazy smile, holds
her gum half way out, says,
You wanna piece?

I’m good, I smile and
high five a how are you,
as a little boy asks what’s for snack.

You’re ugly, she tells him.

Fast forward -
kicked off the bus for fighting
kicked off computers for pushing,
Myspace-ing, You Tube-ing, and writing YOU SUCK on everybody’s screens,
kicked outta home cause her mama can’t between her daughter and a drink
and a father can’t father from prison.

And this morning she didn’t have time
to grease her hair down
so she is two times the girl she usually is.
A story big enough to get lost in
and she is trying to tame it, pull it back
in case someone might
see her.

She is beautiful, and I tell her so.
Her eyes look left as she’s coming out of hiding,
stops breathing for three seconds
while she decides
what kind of beautiful
she wants to be.

CROW SONG

2010-06-12T14:57:00.007-08:00

Sitting at the park the other day I saw a predictable group of pretty white chicks hanging out in the sun and I noticed they had the attention of this young Native Ak boy nearby me. I wanted to write him a swan song poem, a love hard die early sing this with your last breath kind of poem, but since I can't write fiction I guess it's also a poem about how we're worlds apart. cne

CROW SONG

Swan pond
popping along

A continent
of soap white plumage
flocked together,
necks like slim dancers
bottoms up, down,

and she,

she is a bottle on the water,
the sun seeking her out -
held between its rays,
cupped between spread hands,
abracadabra.

The crow
watched her wings shake,
her hips shake,
her lips shake,

and across the lawn
he hopped towards her
with his best claw forward.

On his second thought
he sat back down,
park bench to the ground,
took out a cigarette and lit it.

Two puffs, bit lips,
and a long braid down his back later,
he began to squawk.

He squawked breathless:

WHITE SWAN
he sung
WHITE SWAN OF THE WHITE POND,
BE MINE
BE MY PERFECT PICTURE
he stepped
BE MY WINNING TICKET
he stepped
BE MY FIRST BLOOM OF THE SEASON
he ran
MY SLIVER OF LIGHT IN THE MORNING
MY GRANITE GLASS HANDS MY SOFT SOUL SAND
I WILL BUILD YOU CASTLES

His wings spread like a lonely boy’s caped hero,
high held beak thick with shadows,
and he could not swim,
but this was his song
so he leapt in.

MY SWEET SALT ON THE WATERMELON
MY DEVIL’S CLUB TEA SMOOTH AGAINST MY TEMPER
MY TEAR GARDEN PILLOW THAT KNOWS WHAT KIND OF MAN I REALLY AM

The pond parted
wild swan honks and hisses
MY LOTUS LILY LANTERN
LET ME LOVE YOU WITH THE MOON ON!

The heart shaped males began to pump like fists
pecked the light out of the crow so that he knew
that now
was no worse or better time than ever

so he bobbed above the water
LET ME -
LET ME -
WITH THE -
WITH THE MOON -

and she,
she with her broken grace,
didn’t stay to hear the crow song finish.

Splish splash went her backside waves.
Click clack went her dusted heels.

Drip drop went the falling water
sliding off his still hair.

And there was no
applause as he flew back
to his brothers

And there were no
words as they
watched his lost black feathers
float alone on the water.

HAIKU GIVEAWAY DAY

2010-06-09T22:03:00.004-08:00

This morning I made up a Haiku Giveaway and promised to write a haiku for each person who asked for one. I gave away 27 haikus today. Plus got a couple back! :) Thanks to friends who inspired, well, continue to inspire, poetry outta me.

HAIKU GIVEAWAY DAY
A haiku for anyone who asked for one today.

RASSACIN’S PLAYPEN: Your play is so penned / every run skip jump cartwheel / leaves a trail of poems.

SPEARAMINT RODRIGO: Your mint is so speared / if I’m cravin something fresh / I look to your sword.

TATIANA FIREFLY: Your fire is so fly / logs jump into your burnt arms / just to hear you spit.

PADRA’S SWING SET: Your set is so swung / even wind can’t flip your kicks / keep em high, so high

SKY HIGH ALICIA: Your sky is so high / the kids send their balloons up / just to dream with you

FULL MOON MEGAN: Your moon is so full / the werewolves are dressing up / to dance in your glow

MIXTAPE FOR LIZ: Your tape is so mixed / it’s like kimchi flavored Bach / looped on a dove song

CHRIS’S KITTEN: Your kit is so ten / it’s double thumbs up, peace sign, / pinky promise plus

DAN’S BIG BOX: Your box is so big / the world is guns and villains / till wife turns it off

ROCK STAR KATIE: Your star is so rocked / you can shoot and make a wish / both feet on the ground

MIDNIGHT MADDIE: Your mid is so night / Sofia got her eyes tight / dreams sweet on your chest

VANESSA’S GREEN EGGS: Your eggs are so green / I would eat them in a box / or with you, you fox.

ANGIE’S BLUE BELL: Your bell is so blue / it rings wild razz lollipops / on our grown up tongues

CHRISTY’S WILDLIFE: Your life is so wild / giraffe spot love and snake smiles / you just can’t cage that

MELISSA SPICE JAR: Your jar is so spiced / gotta warn em, don’t get too / crazy shakin ya

WHAT’S UP MARY: Your what is so up / the who when where why and how / got nothin on it.

FREESTYLE SARAH: Your style is so free / and your hugs are golden so / I think I owe you

STACY JAY Z: Your Jay is so Z / or is it Lo or is it / Ray? You would know this.

SASHA’S SMALL TALK: Your talk is so small / I keep it in my pocket / rainy day savings

KRISTIN’S STARFISH: Your fish is so starred / I saw him swim crooked but / you see his best strokes

GOLD’S STRAIGHT TALK: Your talk is so straight / it squares up like a window / mmm that’s some fresh air

JULIA’S CITY BANK: Your city’s so bank / the sky dumps its purse in the / million dollar sea.

KAYLA’S SMALL FRY - Your fry is so small / I won’t tell if you won’t, so / buy a large let’s eat

SMOKE STACK JANELLE: Your stack is so smoked / he stopped breathing and fell when / you walked in the room

FAST TRACK JOSHUA: Your track is so fast / I thought I heard you but it / might’ve been the wind

EMILY’S STOP WATCH: Your watch is so stopped / no fuss no rush no mom mom / bear hug, who wants that.

NEON DEB: Your ne is so on / a lighthouse in the city / pink red lime flash arms

CHAMPION

2010-06-03T21:38:00.006-08:00

Who loves Mexico?
He does! says so right
on his double X L teeshirt verde
and I can only see a couple inches of
copper skin wrists
and soft knuckled fists
as he huffs and puffs and
blows his silver medal breath down.

Asphalt black lipstick streaks
every other time his floppy kicks kiss the pavement,
and later some stove sweat mama’s gonna
warn him that’s his only pair.

I’m gonna win! he yells,
a shag of a missing haircut bouncing in
and out of his endless knot eyes,
and he grins like a champion
as every skinny stick of him runs down Julep
alone.

IN FULL BLOOM

2010-05-27T15:20:00.004-08:00

Like every year about now,
the same plain stems are yawning,
their first words brilliant red petals,

And a grizzly in a rock hole,
alone at the end of his dreams,
does a sun salutation.

The ice has broken,
if you haven’t heard,
soon only to be crystal pages,
another winter someone’s father’s father
will read from memory, will turn
with bestseller lips.

And Lena, woman of pauses,
takes two when I ask her how she is,
fifty something rivers and
my winged minutes between us.

Towards me,
the generation she sees through,
the cardboard snappers with exhaust in
our shoes, our noses, our stories,
a water wheel that will only turn over ten more times
this morning, she
nods and puts her words in anyway,
says,

Today,
I woke up happy
for the first time
in a long time.

And like that
I can’t see the ground,
her voice in full bloom.

MAY THE TIDE CATCH YOU

2010-05-24T22:13:00.005-08:00

Dear man like a rotten onion
with layers of lies split before tear
lapped knives,

Dear smitten sleeve with no heart,

Dear fallen leaf with relief in your thin torn smile
as you jaggedly careen into my
park bench chest,

Find another girl.

She whose world has always been right side up.
She who cannot read in the dark.
Who sees the richest chocolate in your eyes,
not mud caked drums, not charred leftover love,
not bill page lines of phone numbers or the Charles St asphalt that swallowed her the night she became a stained glass lion mother with nowhere to go but morning,

Find a girl whose dreams are still somewhere inside your hand
and whose pink chances have never been blown on a man
you remind her of.

She can be your singing seashell

unless you only go for cracked blue black mussels
like me.

May the tide catch you.

YOU BRING OUT THE KOREAN ADOPTEE IN ME

2010-05-18T00:02:00.005-08:00

Wrote this after Sandra Cisnero’s "You Bring Out the Mexican in Me". I know Bao Phi also has a version, "You Bring Out the Vietnamese in Me." So here's one for all you ibyangs out there, xoxo.

YOU BRING OUT THE KOREAN ADOPTEE IN ME

You bring out the Korean Adoptee in me.
The snowdrift eyelids.
The unripe peach arms.
The knee jerk kisses I take and save for rainy days.
You know.

You bring out the red button heart in me.
The flashcard Korean nouns in me.
The message in a bottle but the bottle broke.
The fancy chopsticks.

The five year old Asian bob with perfect curled bangs in me.
All my pink dresses, every laced hem, every inch of frill
every warm white tight in me. You bring out
the tacky bling
in my iris.

You bring out the frozen stir fry vegetables and soy sauce in me.
The four inch, no,
two inch heels so I still look good and you still look tall in me.
The fourth Killian and sloppy secrets in me.
The Dance Dance Revolution in me.

You,
You bring out the airplane in me.
The flame start turbine jet stream flight in me.
The Pacific, in tablespoons, in me.
The quake of migration,
the tsunami of children.

Our mothers’ treasure chest memories
sunken to the bottom of their throats.
The family tree with ghost branches.

The hum
of trains pumping below the pavement skin,
the hum
of one woman singing arirang into the dusk room of
twenty one babies not her own,
lives paused on lullabyes.

I want to sing this song for you,
roll my Korean Adoptee tongue into
quarter notes on your lips.

I want to make you failed Asian recipes and
steamed rice outta my twenty pound bag I will
never finish.

I want to tie donated hanboks loose
on our long lost bodies, take photos
of how Korean we are some days.

The Korean Adoptee in me, I am
always looking
for someone to save me.

You,
broken history you,
bulgogi smile you,
half cigarette and sunglasses
on the flat roof of a Seoul building you,
Come here,
let me un-Levi, un-American Eagle you,
let me play your fingertips like a grand piano and
spread our palms out like last flimsy pieces of a
two hundred thousand piece
puzzle

and you can have mine.

Breaths upon my chest,
your midnight hair in my full moon hands,

and not the language we lost
or the language we were given
has a word for this,
this tear streaked love,
this yinyang heartbeat
beneath your cheek.

WHALE STANDING IN THE WATER

2010-05-13T07:09:00.005-08:00

Naahaan Dakhl’aweidi,
whale standing in the water,
bravery on freedom,
heart on fin,
a harpoon pen and
an eye for an eye better
to see you with.

Straight hair so long it could make
a settler’s shotgun look crooked,
burnt leather bible ashes braided down his back

hands hazeled by heartbeats he inherited,
carried close in an open canvas bag.

He has drawn his people,
their calm curves and their whipped tails,
carvings sailed into ink

and he looks fresh
all 2010 “real Indian”
says he’s
gonna hustle the tourists for some prints.

I told him to bring his drum, too,
that they’d pay hot white money for a song.

Between beats,
Naahaan skims the blood soaked ocean,
chin up against the rising tide,
with flood gated eyes,

a sage smoked star shooting
as he tells me,

I don’t think
they can afford a song.

WHAT DOES AN ILLEGAL IMMIGRANT LOOK LIKE?

2010-05-11T23:04:00.003-08:00

This was my response to SB1070, the incredibly racist bill from Arizona that legalized racial profiling, allowing police to pull over anyone who might "look like an illegal immigrant." At the press conference, the governor was asked what an illegal immigrant looks like. Since she herself didn't know, I guess this poem is dedicated to her.

This poem was published by Race-Talk, despite being an unworkshopped poem from National Poetry Writing Month, when I was writing a poem-a-day for shits and giggles. Woo hoo to that!

WHAT DOES AN ILLEGAL IMMIGRANT LOOK LIKE?
4/28/10

An illegal immigrant
looks like a nickel
tails up
on the sidewalk,
fallen out of someone’s pocket.

She looks like pressed bleached sheets
on cheap beds
tucked tight,
a hundred of them
twelve stories high.

I saw one like a mango,
peeled and sprinkled with chili powder
on a stick like america,
layers cut diagonally,
a flower on Lake Street.

She looks like an amethyst grape
plucked by the millions,
stains like bruises
but she’s sorry and she loves you.

He looks like that kid
I don’t know his name
but he sits over
there
and his lunch stinks.

She looks like a street of Harajuku,
straight cut bang and bangles,
heavy print and bright colors
-oh my bad -
that’s Gwen Stefani!
(She might be legal.)

An illegal immigrant looks like
Chinese Exclusion 1882
Asian Exclusion 1924
Executive Order 9066
Patriot Act 2001
SB1070 five days ago

1911
looks like an angel made of bunk beds and cells
where Chinese men write poems into the wooden wall like it could weather the wait,
looks like a store sign
in 1922
“Absolutely no dogs or Filipinos allowed”,
like 1942 spam
rolled up like an enemy
internment camp sushi.

He is a community tree in the 1930s.
Or the 1940s or the 1960s
who has seen
too
many
dead people
to climb on.

He is a boat
in 1492
sailing the ocean blue

black
brown
red
yellow.

He looks like a hill
made of bodies
covered in grass
and a playground,

like a scar
on the bottom of my feet,
still growing.

He looks like
Joseph Ileto who looked like Vincent Chin who looked like Fong Lee who looked like
your neighborhood postman, like a good husband, like a boy on a
maddening threatening five deviled bicycle,
looked like a good target, like a bad seed, like the wrong crowd, like a jap mother f**ker who stole “our” jobs,
so one by one by a hundred they
killed them

innocently.

Because if you look
like the law
you look
legal.

And the rest of us are just wire cages
and a magic trick away
from knowing whose turn it is
to be the sacrificial pigeon

and it’s showtime,
all the time,
so you need to know the difference.

POCKET POEM

2010-05-09T11:38:00.012-08:00

Well it's Mother's Day! Sadly, I woke up to a sick son. :( As I held him, I started to write this poem, wanting to hold on to this feeling of home.

POCKET POEM

My son has now reached
the rightful age of rock exploration.

Standing on a low side of a mountain,
millions of rocks abundant,
he sees each one.
As he picks them up,
spread them here, drops them there,
shares a handful, and
tastes them when you’re not looking,
he finds them all
equally amazing.

Giving back a lumpy rust colored boulder,
I place it in the half kangaroo pouch of his hoodie,
and I define the 100th noun of the day:

Mira, this is a pocket.
When you find something
that you really like you put it in your pocket,
and then you always have it with you!

As he walks away,
the rock and pocket talk already lost among
today’s many lessons,

he turns four,
with a red matchbox mustang in his pocket,
a small tin tink tink as he runs far enough ahead to
tag the bench before I do.
You’re so fast, I say.
He is still laughing proudly

as he turns nine,
with two pieces of dead tree in his pocket,
and a third in his English grip, while he
drags it through the dirt,
writing all four of his names on
the trail behind us.
Before he hollers what it says

he turns thirteen,
with a music player in his pocket,
his favorite band
stickered on the back fading,
and he forgets it’s there as
he and his friends roll up their jeans and
absently look for fish in the fresh river.
When he remembers

he is seventeen,
with keys and dreams in his pocket,
and he has everywhere to go but here,
to places where there are no mountains,
no benches with a deciduous view of the valley,
no brave backed fish,
no rock rich trails,
no clean cut clear rivers -
places where sticks are used for war
not poems -
and his mother, his home, will wish she had told him,

One more thing, son.
Some things
do not fit in your pocket.
So it’s important to also have

strong legs,
a big heart,
and a good memory.

SOMETHING HE HAD TO TELL ME

2010-05-08T10:36:00.004-08:00

I undressed for him
long zip tooth by tooth,
peeled back every piece of courage,
every layer of loss,
and even the hope i wear on my bad days,
all of it.

His kisses were certain,
something he had to tell me,
ask me,
my temple, my clavicle.
But two centimeters into my heart

he saw my clay crusted repair job,
absent pieces and a weak beat.

Lip bit I grabbed the blanket,
covered my broken love and
laughed half so he didn’t have
to be sorry.

Still he stared at my skin intently,
slowly pulled me out like a mural not yet dry,
every square inch his
favorite color.

THE GLASS [revised]

2010-05-06T21:31:00.005-08:00

for isa and giselle (daughters of rodrigo and nubia)

dear princess,

this is the shiny tiny piece of glass that i saw your father
look through like a man who could not see the future but smiled anyway
buried in his pocket so the villains could not get it
and on some streets
he threw his hands in
held it so tight that
his palm bled red roses but you had to get close to see them, it was
no secret,
the way he
flipped it
in the sunlight
let it dazzle like a room full of riches if only for a minute
and it always landed
on the side he thought was lucky,

he wrote
carving into the border
he marched
with it between his teeth

he blew fire
cracked vases
skated sideways
through mazes
sung anthems
caught stars
lost stars
fell running
went empty
with tears
to make this, this

glass slipper
for you, dear,
ever after.

THIS CITY [revised]

2010-05-06T21:25:00.006-08:00

Here's a poem I'd written for National Poetry Writing Month (Napowrimo), 1 of 30, so naturally there's a lot in there that needs quite a bit of workshopping. Here's a revised version.

THIS CITY

Tonight there are no stars only clouds to wish on in this city.

I shudder something small, beckon wet matches in my spirit,
scratch sparks scratch flames lookin for a little light
to write by

and I wanna make dreams come true for the lady on the bus who had ten too many drinks for the two of us, who
was hard pressed for manners and had a heavy mouth,
she told someone to shut the f--k up and she
put a shaky hand on my nine
month pregnant belly and she blessed my baby, God bless us, God
bless us

and God bless this city,
this ping pong rain shine rain rain shine city,
this one day some day break away city,
this orange rain jacket strappy backpack walk across a bridge in the wind
city, hold on to your
hat,
my love will knock you over.

This kiss
I’m blowing from the angel side of the mountain’s shoulder,
standing between trees that grow in S’s, Some
Sloped Sideways by the Snow’s Strangle,
but they always Survive,
reachin up,
lookin up,
in this city.

This city of wooden planks like hands,
playing cats cradle with boat lines,
wobbling with the waves as every lady gillnetter
sways her hips,

in this city,
where even tattered kites kiss the crisp sky
and children as young as 50 still pull at their strings,
grass beneath them, frosted earth beneath them,
yesterday beneath them,

the pixies in this city,
the spinners in this city,
the downriggers with a line of silver between their fingers
in this city
dragging at the bottom of the sea and
still
they glimmer.

This city,
where Carlos Boozer was good before he was great
and a bronze statue of a dog greets the new boats like old friends,
this city, with a princess glacier in an unlocked box
and a raven, still circling with his secrets,

this
city,

where girls get married in semi-white dresses and Xtra Tuffs
on a fingernail piece of a beach that only exists when the tide’s out,
looking into the pacific
where only men and women who have mightier gods dare to whistle in the wheelhouse and on most nights

I don’t wish upon a hole punched sky
or sparkly specks like they could end my sentences,
and I don’t squint when the world is blurry.

In this city,
the fog is my companion.
Amazing grace,
how sweet the sound.

NEW GIRL

2010-05-06T10:17:00.012-08:00

There’s a new baby girl at daycare.

Bertha tells me that
my son will only sleep
when she sleeps
and today
that was not very much.

At dinner
he is someone else’s boy -
hand slapped in sweet potato,
face tear laced,
wailing,

and I can’t tell
if he’s tired

or in love.