South Koreans have pale white faces. Oriental is what many people call them, though they aren’t oriental. Their faces are like rice cakes: soft, squishy, and fleshy, like the pastry itself. Their faces pearl white or the color of sunscreen that reflect the harsh rays of sun as it beats onto their umbrellas as they stroll down hilly streets. The porcelain color of their faces reflects at one another as they chatter about the newest Korean beauty trends. Asking one another what the best course of action is so they can keep their porcelain faces polished and pretty, like a doll. So that at least if not smarts or money, they can have pretty faces that they have manufactured for themselves.
Their faces are unchanging like the seasons the Han River runs through.…
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1
Nicholas Spice wrote about an elderly man
walking in the woods who meets a frog
that asks him for a kiss, promising
to turn into a princess. The man puts the frog
in a side pocket. What’s wrong with you?
the frog asks. A man your age needs a sweet princess.
The man replies, I would rather a talking frog.
2
As the Spanish dictator Franco lay dying in bed,
he was told that a great number of people had gathered
outside the palace in order to say farewell to him.
Why? the generalissimo asked. Where are they going?
3
Henry III was sent a polar bear
from Norway in the year 1251.
He ordered it tethered on a long cord
so that it could fish in the river Thames
from its den in the Tower of London. …
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One tree trunk paused our walk:
corkscrew-twisty,
as if a tornado had taken and spun it.
“Yes,” the dendrologist explained:
“more flexible, this tree, better survivor
than its neighbors—for instance
that one on the ground—to gale forces.
“Some of the storms we’ve had may even
have whirled it from the top—
like a top, you know. Over decades.”
With a finger I traced a spiral up its bark,
all the way back to boyhood.
“Son, you must redeem my insecurities.”
“Dear, you’ll despise the people I despise.”
Our group left that tree, found others. I
swung into the walk, feeling lithe—
by turning, turning, I came round right.
– Russell Rowland…
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Steeped sage massing at the bottom of a cup
Moves as seaweed moves in the brothy sea
My child’s tears as salty as the sea
Deprived of the comfort I withhold
Her comfort dried up like a potsherd
Unearthed from beneath red desert sands
The sand empty-handed but for heat
Burning as this mug burns in my hands
I hold a mug that promises remedy
Passed down to me by ancient mothers
Sometimes a mother must dry up quickly
However bitterly she cries for milk
I swallow and it’s bitter on my tongue
Steeped sage massing at the bottom of a cup
– Christine Pennylegion…
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December 31st 1999: We all stayed the night at a mid-range hotel in the town next to our own just outside of Boston. The boys and I had spent the past few days sliding around unfinished hardwood panels in our socks, and eating off our family room couch we’d crammed into the kitchen to make space for the new floors. We knew nothing of Y2K, or what was to come, nor did we care for anything but that our parents had turned our house into an empty playground. Laughing into the cold Massachusetts air, we ran to the Jeep and our mother, smiling, said “hold on” as she tried to unlock the car fast enough for her eager children and their father. So we wore sunglasses in the shape of “2000” into the night of the new year while big men turned our house back into a home.…
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My grandmother’s wringer
washer, stolid on
their porch. We told her how
washing machines now
made life easier. No,
she used the wringer washer
until the end. Decades
of water pressed out
to hang clothes in the back yard
before watching
As The World Turns
on a black-and-white set,
problems of the Hughes
and Stewart families, what
she referred to as
“My story.”
– Kenneth Pobo…
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Some say that it is possible to dry a spirit from the cold
if you bring it by a flame, urging here, with a warm mug
urging hold and stay awhile, but child, I don’t know.
When it comes to what it’s really like, we are left
bereft with feeble words, and there are limits, too,
when it comes; to what any one of these may hold,
what any constellation untold may know, at any time, no
matter how vast the reach of your intention, the spirit
in space grows cold until it coalesces restless among
others with enough mass and time to collapse into
matter hot enough to burn the birth of the last new
star, the one that looks like nothing now, and will…
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