3rd Excerpt from Seoul Sonnets

With time, with mind
little things swell and
disappear or stay the same,
making infinite time-stamped
copies of themselves in the
infinite number of moments
making up reality – but
I can’t let you know,
because the lie is better,
sweeter than truth
with its funhouse mirror twisted
refractions hateful to the
eye – warped lightwaves
worming through the retina

In the centre of the black hole,
o what dreams may come
when even light
cannot escape, and all is
infinitely dense and just
as frustrating as before, –
Maybe love is nothing more
than the beating of single
hearts in unison longing
to return to the infinite whole…
Rattling, hip-hop pounding
out of the speakers and
we’re heady with red wine
and time outside of time

From the pills we took
or didn’t take, and our
thoughts flying through
the air, texts we send
drunk and don’t remember,
so heavy in the head
and dizzy with lights and
gibberish and cigarettes
to bring us back down—
I tried to spend the night in
silence, but the phone
wouldn’t stop – “struggling
war desperate suicidal”—
why did she send those words

Flashing through the cold ether
after dark on a February night?
Just to
keep me awake
and on the road—
it worked – she got drunk
on warm cranberry juice and
almost cried over her life—
“What am I doing here?”
I could ask
the very same question, with no
answer to satisfy.
What was it?
a flash of something

Cornered my eye in
the confusion, the
sadness at the end
of the night when
the booze is gone
and you forget why
we got together in the
first place. You’re
sleeping – that’s okay –
I’m awake because
you’re sleeping and I
forget what it means
to kill the monster
in dreams;

I sit in envy of your peace,
your tranquil acceptance
of the conflicts
things that
tie us to the world
and promise rebirth;
Are you just tired
of sleeping alone?
I am too – it’s not
a stab, it’s
just about the only
honest thing
I can say at this moment
when no one can hear.

What Love Means (fiction)

[For Mia Pak]


“What does it mean to be in love?”

she asked sipping some sort of angry candy out of a cocktail glass,

“Nobody ever bothered to tell me or show me—My parents just shouted at each other until long after the divorce…”

I shrugged politely and I said I didn’t know – she didn’t want to hear what I had to say, only wanted a dance partner for her cynical little ballet, so I said as little as possible and continued to pay for her drinks, which go by a name too obscene to print.

“I have never met a man who didn’t drop me like a hot rock as soon as he got what he wanted—”

I was beginning to see why. Within five minutes it was glaringly obvious – if you don’t believe in love, then people will stop trying to love you, and if you expect to be treated badly, people will always rise to the occasion.

I wondered where her friends were – I looked around subtly. Usually this would mean that I was preparing to make a move and looking around to make sure that I didn’t get blindsided, but this time it occurred to me that I was hoping someone might take her off my hands. I had lost my mercenary mentality and I was just sad to listen to her. She was whiny and empty-headed, but I didn’t want to be the next page in her album of disappointments.

How could she not see that I was trying not to listen to her?

Is this the trade that she is accustomed to making? She finds a man, he buys her drinks and listens to her sad disaster of a life story and in return she fucks him and then also gets to call him an asshole for never calling again, thus strengthening her convictions and lengthening the rant that she gets to dish out to the next man in line.

“I’m sorry, you must be bored – I’m sure you didn’t sit down here just to listen to me bitch…”

And there was the opening; she may as well have said “Kiss me”, but I couldn’t do it. I told her

“I know how you feel – I really do. I was in a relationship for three years and everything was perfect – I thought it would be forever, but it never is. It was love though. I can’t explain it but I know how it feels. I don’t think the heartbreak ever goes away until you find that love again. That’s why really old couples die like six months apart – There is not enough time to find that love again – no hope, no reason to go on – the body shuts down—”

Then she kissed me, leaning in with sweetness of vodka and pineapple on her tongue. My insides moved – that sort of sinking feeling in the organs when the brain triggers the release of adrenaline and switches from cold logic to something more instinctual, and my lips and tongue started moving on their own, and my mind started to wander.

I thought about the way no two women in the world kiss alike. Every woman’s way of kissing seems to me to be an analogue to her essential self, – with fears, hopes, insecurities, pride, strength, weakness – all revealed in the movement of tongue and lips. A woman who seems crazy will usually erase all doubt by doing something odd and unsettling like sticking her hole tongue straight and tensed into my mouth and gyrating it while running her teeth across it. Some shy women will avoid opening their mouths altogether and try to focus on the tame interplay of lips, which perhaps seems more proper. When a shy woman does relax a bit and lets her mouth open, I’ll gradually work my tongue in gently – but more often than not I’ll have my tongue nearly bitten in half as the shy woman closes her mouth quickly in order to return to the monotonous rhythm of lips.

Some women like to kiss and some don’t. Some fear the intimacy of it, the vulnerability it invites, but some women seek it, knowing that therein lies their power. This woman liked to kiss, and she kissed rhythmically and without hesitation—if we were dancing, her hands would be on my hips – firmly in the lead; she kept her hand on the back of my neck, keeping my head in place, while my hands rested open-palmed and slack on her thighs. She kissed with the confident rhythm of someone who took pride in being a good kisser—she did not need to be told that she was good. She took her hand from my neck

“Not here. Let’s go out back for a minute.”

She took my hand and led me out the side door of the bar into a small alleyway. She grabbed the sides of my shirt where it was open below the collar and pushed me up against the fire escape. She kissed harder this time, almost with an edge of desperation. She was drunker than I had realized.

Though my mind was relatively clear, all thoughts seemed to travel from a haze to reach my conscious mind, seeming to crop up unsummoned from the deep. They floated up slowly and easily, thanks to adrenaline’s ability to seemingly slow down time—It was as though I had time to hold each thought in my hand and turn it over until I understood it. I thought of sunsets in the fall, I thought of the girl I was trying to forget…I thought about how hungry I was – tried to remember when last I had I eaten.

My hand began to travel up her skirt routinely, my earlier misgivings about her having entirely vanished. She gripped me tighter, already beginning to convulse a little bit. My hand went down the front of her nylons and she began to breathe heavily, pulling her mouth away from mine to take in more air. I kissed her neck as she reached down my pants and gripped me purposefully. This went on for what felt like a wonderful eternity, but was more like thirty seconds, and then she pulled away suddenly, with an unplaceable expression on her face, blending anguish, fear and loneliness, and she began to cry.

“What’s wrong?”

I asked – my voice had turned deep and husky.

“I’m sorry…I’m so sorry…”

I smelled her perfume over everything in the cold alley, and my insides did that sinking thing again, but this time it was something different.

“Hey, shh – you don’t need to be sorry, it’s okay –”

I put my arms around her and drew her into me, stroking her hair and whispering to her like to a baby, which is the only thing I know how to comfort. Something had changed. I realized that I now cared about this girl. I didn’t want her to be sad.

She cried, I whispered. I lost track of time as adrenaline subsided and was replaced by something else, making me feel slow and queer all over. The busboy stuck his head out the side door and started hauling out cardboard. She pulled away, makeup streaming down her face and smudged where she had left it on my shirt.

“I’m sorry.”

I felt like a mushy idiot as I hugged her again, then handed her my handkerchief.

“It’s okay.”

We went back into the bar. My friends were gone. Her friends had found a group of guys and were leaving. She asked me to come with her, but I told her a lie to excuse myself. I got her number without even thinking about it – I knew I wouldn’t call her. As she left with her friends I said

“Don’t be sad – Time heals all wounds.”

And I swear that I believed what I told her. Looking into her puffed up eyes that to everyone else would seem destined to repeat the lonely cycle of heartbreak and hollowness, I had faith that soon she wouldn’t need to cry anymore.

I walked out into the night alone, past the prostitutes and street food vendors all looking bored and underworked, and I tried to remember what love felt like, but I could only think of pictures of me smiling and staying up late just to feel her close to me.

14/02/11

Seogwipo, 23/02/11

How long has it been?
I have a heart that I will not give up to the whirlwind,
I will not wrong the reality,
I will not meet the Buddha on the road and let him live,
I will stab the Buddha through the heart and stop the horrible dreams,
I will love furiously until the sun burns out,
and -------, you're not too old, I would have married you
and we could have been swept away lost and bound to the easeful whirlwind,
hold me again because I can't wait until the next life.

Genuine Dew

XXV –

April I’m staring into the sawed-off shotgun barrel 7:30 am Tuesday no answers celibate hole in the sky,

lips dry face dry heart strung out on the line starched stiff as a board – only thinking of you, the womb, – of wonder the traps the hooks the web where you found me

cutting up prose

in uneven rows cascading rows – the rose – that morphs into multiple mazes the anagogic liminal metaphysical storm drain lay down laughing soused too sad to see that the wind is the rain’s accomplice,

April, save me, tell me you hear me you see me in your dreams too – it has to mean something – you look upon me and I know you,

soft red – pale hair – green eyes, innocence of Candide smiling auguries of strange but possible worlds,

always more fantasy than fiction – all stories begin “who am I?”,

The problem: these thoughts go nowhere – Tuesday ends and I haven’t left bed – shaking to thoughts of – April –

Every room a womb – a tomb a shrine to the merciless divine mother – April –

Worlds tumble into order as prayers rise and make it so,

so comes love marriage honour redemption mansion on the hill or bumming down deserted highways of Lethe to Elysium Omaha,

– still in the Bastille – bed in Toronto – cold for the sake of cold warmed by dreams of April …

2nd Excerpt from Seoul Sonnets

It’s too late, it seems
to chase you down now;
they had you on the wheel
long before we met, –
but too early for this:
슬퍼하다 – too early
to feel grief so deep,
so literary – but I was
taught that time—time avails
not, so here is the senseless
lament of stinging behind the
eye, and explosion of colour
when the flash of light
smashes against the retina.

Do I forgive you? I do –
I did before we began, knew
there was nothing else
to do – knew it was
the errand wholly of
a fool, though sometimes
in fairytales, the fool
breaks through, so when
you ask for forgiveness,
I smile so deeply as to feel
pain, and say “yes! yes!
I do!” How could I
grudge, embittered
against one as pure as you?

Why do we chase foolish
challenges, and roam
through vampire streets
for belt notches? Why
do we stray off the path
into the bracken?
Service wrote a poem
about us and I won’t quote
but you know
which one – I beg
the question: can you
find your way by only
staying on the road, or
are we forced by spirits

To wander off from the
easy path? The gift is love,
at least, that is what I
have read in between the
lines of discarded fliers and
subway ads bearing images
of surgical beauty that
whisper “누가 당신
사랑?” Why
do they laugh? Why do
I think of the jeering faces
of the girls in 2nd grade,
and why would I think
anything has changed?

The gift is love, but the giver
is going broke slowly, calling
up on the mainline for more,
for truckloads – because
by Sunday we all feel unloved
and lost in a spacy
exhaustion loop and
we can’t shop our way out
and prayer seems hollow, but
still worth a try – worth
the sweat of turning the
page in search of
a line to change your life by –
a lie to forget by.

Itaewon Girls