Age 0-5

 

Beneath the blanket

of a soft, tender leaf sleeps

a young butterfly.

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60 Years

 

Let us go back

and shrink the glass giants back to Earth

remove the cinder blocks one by one

smear the silver ashes and let them

settle on the marked stones of our

great-grandfathers like their

blood, sixty years before.

 

Let us go back

to the cone-shaped hats

the rice paddies where we plucked

our dinners from sun-drenched stalks

the cloth-wound markets where our

grandmothers sold crimson squares

stitched by the same hands that

fermented our cabbage.  

 

Shall we go back

three a.m, my mother searching

for the toilet with a flashlight

night seeped with mildew and cicada cries

she dips her hair in an icy river

to suds away the country soot

she shivers.

 

Shall we go back

Shall we

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At the Marketplace

 

Eight a.m; instead of coffee

women in their forties with permed hair:

“Fresh mackerel for five thousand!”

One hand, my mother holding

a crumpled bill, smells like the sea

the other enfolding my small fingers;

she makes the exchange.

Lines in her palm

spread like the two diverging rivers

across our apartment complex—

one merging with the Han

the other heading straight for the Yellow Sea—

as she hands the money

over the crate displayed

with saran-wrapped pollock,

octopus legs, half-alive.

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Age 6-12

 

Two twin trees entwined

House one mother bird.

It sings.

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A Sunny Day for a Funeral

 

Death, as I understood it then—

nine, nearly five feet—was supposed to be

bittersweet

like the cinnamon punch on

the refreshment table I

wanted to devour, but couldn’t

for there must always be

a wait.

 

The holy man continued to officiate in

futile attempt to mitigate the

melting crowd

amongst whom my aunt

yawned, the twins giggled

as the caterpillar on his shoulder wriggled

for there was, it seemed,

one question

 

on their minds. Dead eyes gleamed at

the grand finale: a

brown envelope

followed by “last will and testimony”

yet no one dared make

the first move

for there must always be

a polite ping-pong match:

 

“You first,” “No, you,”

until I decided to end

the madness

with crossed arms and unapologetic hips:

“What’s the hold-up?”

To which I received: “Wait, my boy, wait,”

for that was, it seemed,

the stuff of funerals on a sunny day.

The Door Left Open

 

Last night I saw

a shadow

fall across the midnight

blue curtain

a shadow along the

crack of yellow

light streaming in from the

room where it lived every

night through the

door left open in case I might

hear in case I

might see

the monster

hear the monster

see the monster—

it stops.

it lurks.

it knows.

 

I squeeze my eyes under

the star-patterned blanket.

I let it kiss me with

my mother’s tears before it

shuts the door behind.

 

Age 13-16

 

Too many fruits in

the fruit bowl. Three apples, four

pears, one persimmon.

The American Virgin

 

Here’s to the first

In-N-Out burger

to which I lost

my American virginity

and began my glorious rebirth.

 

Here’s to the first

Michael Scott joke

I pretended to get

then later Googled to learn

the right way to laugh.

 

Here’s to the first

highway (freeway? highway?) patrol cop

who stopped me for following the speed limit

then waved both hands when I got out:

“That’s not how we do things here.”

 

Here’s to the first

Starbucks cup scribble

rhymed with “ping-pong”

because my name didn’t sound

like “Ally” or “Sarah.”

 

Here’s to the last

time I’ll go running alone after dark,

or make a joke at JFK;

instead I’ll look up to the skyline

and admire the lady in green.

 

Cafeteria Corner

 

She sits, she picks

smears of chocolate

from abandoned Kit-Kat wrapping

crinkled like a half-formed

caterpillar, waiting

for something other than

fourth period.

 

Words, or The Devolution of the English Dictionary

 

Like this:

A “hippocampus” is no hippo nor

campus—words

with neither

of the two components that

make it mean

 

something. What does a word mean,

does a word mean? This

oxymoron that

perplexes honor

students and sons of immigrant alike; neither

can fathom the madness of words,

 

for words

mean

neither

this

nor

that

 

—it is precisely that!

English words

don’t sound how they mean. Nor

do they mean

any more than they sound—is this

what you signed up for? Me, neither.

 

signed up for? Me neither—

neither—this nor that—

this:

words

should sound how they mean.

My Aunt Eleanor—

 

Nor—

neither—

mean—

That—

Words—

this.

 

“I”m not being mean. Nor is

this unjust. Neither of us can

escape it, that fickleness of words.”

 

Pilgrim’s Playlist

 

A short playlist

for a shorter stay

in your country:

 

Born to Run - Bruce Springsteen

American Pie - Don McLean

Disenchanted - My Chemical Romance

Under Pressure - Queen

Stressed Out - Twenty-One Pilots

Creep - Radiohead

Reputation - Joan Jett

 

Dream On - Aerosmith

Graduation Song - Vitamin C

 

Ages 17-20

 

He waits by the lake

frozen over, fresh

can of worms in hand.

 

Immigration Line

 

Pulling my valise down the walk

of familiar buzz-cut metal

that glide without command

towards two lines—

foreigners here, natives there—

I confidently step to the right

past the red-taped barrier,

scan my passport,

and hold a blink

so the automated voice can

say: “Welcome home.”

See the double-doors slide

reveal greeters behind

metal rails bowing to their Samsungs

and know that I am

home, or rather,

somewhere I can beat

the slow torture reserved

for those without membership

to the club.

 

Sitting In A Hipster Coffee Shop And Typing A Response to W. H. Auden

 

About certainty, they had no doubt,

The New Moderns: how well they calculated

Its fall from grace, its short-lived glory—

The Age of Enlightenment! Christopher Columbus risen from the dead!

—before paving the way for truth

Freshly defined, honed and refined

In reply to a Poundian resound, an unheard-of sound,

the loud demand to “Make it new!”

 

To which, of course, there always will be

College students who don’t particularly care

For what Joyce or Eliot had to say;

Instead, they sit in their own corners, laptops propped,

sipping double-shot lattes, drowning out the old

trickle of a winding Woolfian stream,

Typing, and re-typing to proclaim:

“That is what I meant! That is what I meant all along!”

 

Take Auden’s “Musée des Beaux Arts,” for example: one can’t

Help but admire its unadorned prose, straight-as-a-

measuring-stick (one could almost call it “prosaic”).

“Where’s the crypticism, the originality?” a Modern may ask,

Proving there will always be

a critic, from the CalArts

connoisseur to the Airpod-clogged freshman who

Had somewhere to get to and vroom-vroomed on.

 

Hands

 

You

who paved the dark

with sweat-speckled palms

cold from the night, warm from

the tear-like trickle of

skin on skin,

each raised follicle a

dainty fallacy

an illusion of dusk that

crept quietly, leapt suddenly

as you asked,

“Is this okay?”

while slipping your fingers

under my fainted wrist

and gripping me with

silence–

until dawn rose and

we did, too; yes,

you.

 

In the Fields

 

He wakes to morning bliss: the daily wail

of his alarm, cement-grey walls, boxed in.

He takes no pause; he pours, he stirs, he picks

out all the shamrock greens and powder pinks—

he sits. The milk grows warm. The puffs, once crisp,

now droop with wishes unfulfilled, aban-

doned thoughts like Lucky Charms that slowly sink

 

into abyss. He dreams of fields, chartreuse

and wide, where Sounds of Music deign to grace

the undeserving ears of human pride,

where (real) green clovers grow in their true form

and treasures of gold stay forever cold

because it never. Never gets old.

 

Instead, he sits, before a table carved

from wood, the very same he’d sit beneath

in fields of green that only live in dreams,

and think for hours of which he’ll pick, green or pink,

before he drops his spoon, his bowl into

the sink, picks up his bag, and makes his way.