affluenza

can we not supersize the Mickey D combis
can we stop being Aberzombies
can we exchange our Armani
Chrissy Lou-wearing lasses looking bonny
liking mamas looking hoochie with their Gucci
fake Fossils found in the study of Anthropologie
Prada Fendi Dior Cavallie
people thinking they speak a foreign tongue
people chock full of affluent dung
close the Gap and stop being Forever 21
Diesel in our monster trucks
Diesel with our Chucks
lame ducks run amok with jeans full of Luck
fallin' like Dominos while consuming Mangos
can you hear the Holl[ow]ster Eckō?
the H+M got us bound like S+M
FCUK CK DKNY FUBU FUBAR too far
no wonder we grew up on the Phat Farm
trusting an Old Navy to defend us
Dior worship can't transcend us
take a Guess what's gonna end us
reOutfit the Urbana
stop thinking the only Republic is Banana
splitting Sundays into stun days
stop wasting the C.R.E.A.M. in our Starbeezys
learn to go easy breezy
stop thinking Hugo is the Boss
what's the Lacoste?

A New Room in a Smaller City

(I just moved to a smaller city, so I've been writing a lot about that transition):

Let the cats trace the margins of your attention with their ribs, let them play with the thin plume of newness that flickers across the living room floor, where light takes the shape of a cathedral and passing car horns sound like prayers. Let your mind unfurl its attention like a white flag of surrender, let it loosen its tethers and release poems. A new town can do that, spread its arms wide and reveal hidden plumage. Small town felicity will mend your jewelry free of charge and stop for pedestrians in the cross-walk, provide piles of good maps, but will it unmask itself? In this town you smile at every face like yours and search for life on the railroad tracks. In this room the insistent growl of motorcycles outside swallows the stillness of your desk lamp. All the poetry born into this room will be tinged with the gray-brick loss of one city and the amber discovery of another.

ADVICE

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.

Haiku Stand stuff

Ok I've been slackin the last few weeks what with preppin for the show/trip to Minneap, then traveling, then getting back into the swing of regular life.  But! I *have* technically been writing some, since I've still been doing the Haiku Stand in Juneau.  Here's some from this week:

For Maeghan (request: the ever-present rain)

For Anna (request: her new house)

For Rico (ransom haiku. long story.)

For Kathleen, for her husband (request: technical writer + creative writer)

For Stefan (restoring sanity)

For Tanna (request: how we see ourselves)

Welcome 3 New Contributors!

Huzzah! Thursdays blog welcomes three new ibyang poets: Katie Leo, Jung Mee Bec, and Michael Sung Ho.  Hold on to your hats, these peeps have got it goin on.

Mo

The thing with stealing internet at home is that, sometimes, even when I have a poem written on Wednesday night, I can't post it until Sunday. I'm pretty sure this site has a backdate feature.

Mohammed emigrated here eighteen years ago

because Tehran was looking like hell

and he had a little boy to think about.

Two years after they arrived,

his wife said she preferred the Tehran because

any hell can be home and that one was hers.

That was the year Mohammed started going by Mo.

Mo has a shop in the skyway now.

He dresses nicer than I do, most days,

smiles brighter than I do, most days

and, I suspect, has more of a sense of purpose, self, or whatever

than I do every day.

I’ve seen his son helping him

stock shelves or work the register

but, now it’s Fall and I haven’t seen him in a while.

Mo smiles a little less when his son isn’t working with him

but he’s always a reliable destination for a smile.

As I watch art students drive themselves deeper into debt,

I wonder what kind of loans Mo’s son will have

and I hope it is none

and I hope that is the reason

Mo kept his smile bright

even when some gay guy called him a sand nigger.

Thursday poems, Monday revisions

In an effort to compensate for my recent silence, here are two poems about Korean people I feel differently about. Both originated here and eventually got revised and performed at a recent poetry reading event in St. Paul. Symbolism?? Yeah, I didn't think so either.

Poem for Brian

He came into this world harelip split open,

figured it would help him tell more stories

but was just a baby

with nothing to draw from

so lit lies and fanned them

with the books he got for Christmas

but didn’t read--

scorching his story into

pages penned by white dudes.

Twisted leg set his broken pace,

kept sentences unpredictable--

kept one foot where he was born

by choice, helped him look East

while his stories stayed “too yellow.”

Eventually, eyes turned from slanted to hollow.

Felt his heart swell with

a history no one knew,

didn’t bother to read--

but they liked his stories well enough,

felt sorry that he stopped writing

to lay his head in common ground.

Banana, Split

She knows all the words to Weezer,

was Go-Go Yubari for Halloween

and, in her white-washed mind, her chipmunk cheeks are the

the hottest you’ve ever seen

dressing like a school girl-dragon lady-

ex-Asian hyping the exotic East,

Hangul hurts her hands

so she settles for (what she’s pretty sure is) kanji

Reclaims her hanguk saram handle

But failure by any other name

still reeks like rotting from the inside out--

diseased with something awful, incurable

no matter how many yellow-fevered topicals

coat that vapid pout.

Hitchhiking--no, sidestepping--toward self discovery

or identity-reclamation all for popularity--

she breaks a sweat, remains half a hemisphere away--

grows Madame Butterfly wings

but stays grounded, West of anything worth finding,

blathering on to white boys about how much she’s already found,

pukes out a drunken, broken hangul greeting

and doesn’t understand that

solidarity does not make us friends.

She’s unable to speak--no, unable to be,

all her heart’s sob stories about hidden bloodlines

language lost, and guilty conscience

all turn to pathetic cries for sympathy.

The day can’t come soon enough

when she brings those bloodlines out of hiding,

lets her wrong turns pool beneath her

and still can’t tell

if our stories run the same color.

I Am From

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.

rain

* in honor of my 6th grade writing teacher and the writing exercises we once did and memories of conversations in the lbc.


rain

sounds like fingers tapping on a castle tin roof


rain

tastes like the end of a duracell battery


rain

smells like green soft grass freshly mown


rain

feels like pin pricks to the skin that do not pierce but spread


rain

looks like thin lines running down a page.



-- www.thursdaypoems.blogspot.com

kim thompson friday 10 september 2010 14.09 seoul korea

a very belated thursday poem

* so ive not been writing the past weeks but it doesnt mean ive not had words writhing about... this isnt a poem its just a lot of words...


- so im sitting

listening to "this american life" and thinking about "here"

- "here" being - korea.

and im thinking about what it means to be adopted.

and im thinking about all the white foreign faces here and im not sure really how i fit in... how it is that i can feel this sense of indignation at times with the white faces when its the same kinds of faces that back in the states and over in europe i consider to be some of my truest friends and family...

but here... i confess

at times

i just wish

that

they would all

go home.

and then i get confused cuz i think "kim youre not exactly korean korean and no korean korean will ever see you as fully korean korean and you yourself dont even feel that you are korean korean..."

and then i see white men... white women... chasing after ones who suddenly i consider "MY" people ...

its the sense of superiority.. that gets me

its this attitude that i see in almost every single white n. american i have met here... that somehow where they are from is better than here... and that how they look is more desirable... and that "we" are this experience this delicacy to be had...

and ive heard stories of "them" walking into bars saying

"doesnt it feel good to walk in knowing that you own the place?"

and ive seen and heard for myself

"koreans want us cuz we (white people) are so good in bed"

(and because im not a nice person i cant help but think

"its because back where youre from you cant get laid")

and then i scold myself for not being nice...


and ive seen and heard for myself white people telling us (ibyangs) how we need to feel about being here

and how we have yet to really experience here


and i think "i dont care how long youve lived here... this place this land is more mine than it will ever be yours"

but then im reminded of that invisible manned military line created by "their" governments... and how theyve been taking from here the moment they set foot down on this land

and i scold myself again for not being kinder...


and then i think about the accusations and how ive seen... ibyang men and kyopo men almost desperate for a korean wife... like korea is this new world where they can be the man that they never felt like they were back over there... and i see it with kyopo and ibyang women too... and i wonder how guilty am i of the same?


and yet i know its somehow different

because i know what it is we've lost

and i know who took it...


i see adoption


how it sets everyone off

adoptees cant even get along with each other because of it

i think ive lost friends back home (back home being mpls) because of what i believe...


and i see how torn we are all


ripped not only from our mothers fathers brothers sisters aunts uncles cousins grandmothers grandfathers


but from our land

our country

our identity

our way of seeing in the mirror


and the white faces here

remind me of

how and why this all started


a war

that america encouraged

that gi's fathered

that well meaning white americans and europeans pitied


and i think

"havent you taken enough?"


but then i think of europe

and what i saw in lithuania

and the influence of the west

and how theres a lot of good that has come

but so much bad


i think about ola

and how she told me when the new fountain had been built in her town square

"ahh the west has its influence even in zory now"

and how she told me

"the good is that our education is opening and expanding

the bad is - mcdonalds and fountains and this consumer mentality"


and i think here in korea

who am i to judge a thing?

and i cant judge every white person here

and i even like some of them

but i still wish theyd stop dating my people

but then i go back to

"what exactly do i mean by that? ibyangs or korean koreans? or?"

and

"since when did i become such an ethnocentric type? its a mentality i always deplored in the states and europe and im sorry england i love you but youre amongst the worst for ethnocentric thinking"

and its too many tangents


and theres no resolution


and everyone just gets offended and says "who are you to say this? shouldnt you be more grateful?"


and then i go back to the word "grateful"


and how white people are always saying this

and adoptees have picked up on it


and we're all just so broken and torn and confused


so i dont know


i really dont know


but im trying


because you see


we have no role models


(sadly) we are called into being the models to role something that we are stumbling about in


... i think back to christys poem


- how she said "what would harry holt do?"


what would he do if he knew that this was how it was going to be?


... i look at the white faces here - and wonder if their ignorance is excuse? if their need to pay off debts is enough? if their living or learning language makes them ok?


but then they go and date us


and ive heard them say with my own ears


"korean women like us cuz they know how good we are in bed"


... ... there is no end to this


there is only this middle


and we are in it


www.thursdaypoems.blogspot.com

kim thompson tuesday 7 sept 2010 seoul.s.korea

The Carver

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.

The Carver

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 a son
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 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.

Aftermath

AFTERMATH

The night you planted the bomb I mistook it for flowers.

The smell of affection like silk on my neck,
the curve of my spine a glass vase,
our bouquet of hair,
an odd number falling against each other,
and each piece of clothing stacked against the balance of our nature
so we lessened the weight,
broke from our bases,
I thought
we might spin
in the wind.

I did not spin.
I was not beautiful.
The mattress, sunken and unloved,
thought my bud too sweet to pass,
so it held me hostage in its shallow arms
as you laid me like something exotic to be picked,
something rare to be pressed between you.
Perhaps you saw something in me you wanted to keep.
Perhaps you saw something in me you wanted to take.

I didn’t remember how you took it.

But you followed me.
Years later,
in the birth wing of the hospital where every day is a miracle,
in my room made to look like a home
with laminate cabinets,
with sterile sheets and
law and order
and saltine crackers,
and my lover,
who is waiting for his son to come like a drink in his desert soul.

You crackpot gardener,
you are no one, you are nowhere,
but you got here, doctor’s hand inside me,
checking my cervix and then it is yours,
reaching too deep, too quick, too long, too many times.

I am a dozen roses tied at the waist with barbed wire, I am mid-thrash, in a storm of blood petals, I am no glass vase, just a tornado of shards
and I am cut, years are cut, tongues are cut,
eyelid cut hair locks cut ribs cut cunt cut

I can’t let a baby through this, this aftermath,
this destruction, this city leveled, this ash globe,
where nothing, not a person, not a plant, survives.

I didn’t remember how you took it,
how you traded, how you left something to tick inside me,
to teach my son the sound an enemy makes as he crawls across lines,
to teach my body your sergeants, your manifesto, your anger,
your gloved hands on a seed shaped grenade you
threw into that field of flowers.

The doctors worked for hours,
my baby stubbornly surrendering inside me,
i had to coax him,
had to coax us,
had to lift this broken burning house off of me,
pull my stomach from the rubble.
I smeared my tears into war paint.
I dropped my shield,
let it clank against my baby’s father’s
as they locked.
And against all odds
I slowly opened my petals,
faced the emerging sky,
so bright it paralyzed us.

And it was not you.
It was him,
it was the sun.

Banana, Split (draft)

NOTE: Personally, I get way more pissed off about ignorant people of color who ought to know better not knowing better and, in doing so, making us all look bad. This is especially true with other adoptees who "consider themselves white." Shut up; you are not white. Stop embarrassing yourself and everyone else by rejecting who you are. Most of the time, I just feel sorry for people but there's this one person I know who just pisses me off because of 1. how misinformed she is and 2. how loud she is about it.

I should also mention that I am not claiming to be any kind of authority on self-discovery or identity issues but I feel we can all agree that there is something very wrong when a Korean adoptee dresses up like a Japanese school girl at a party and doesn't understand why none of the other Asian people want to talk to her.

This is still a draft.

She knows all the words to Weezer,

was Go-Go Yubari for Halloween

and, in her tiny-mind, her chipmunk cheeks are the

the hottest you’ve ever seen

dressing like a school girl-dragon lady-

ex-Asian hyping the exotic East

Hangul hurts her hands

so she settles for (what she’s pretty sure is) kanji

Reclaims her hanguk saram handle

But a piece of shit by any other name

still stinks like she’s rotting from the inside out--

diseased with something awful, incurable

no matter how many yellow fevered topicals

coat that vapid pout.

Hitchhiking--no, sidestepping--toward self discovery

or reclamation for popularity--

she breaks a sweat, remains half a world away--

darling, you’ve got to go down the road,

not cross the street

and, remember, before you vomit

your drunken broken hangul greeting at a party

that solidarity doesn’t mean

I want to stand next to you.

I’ve seen Japanophile white girls less offensive than she is--

all alternating between being full of shit and white-boy penis

cleavage over-represented like adopted names in suicide rates

bottom-feeding, sub-human, race-traitor, wannabe,

I don’t care about how hard you had it,

Mom not listening or Dad’s whore-habit--

Unable to speak--no, unable to be,

all her heart’s sob stories about hidden bloodlines

language lost, and guilty conscience

all turn into pathetic cries for sympathy.

The day can’t come soon enough

when she opens up a vein or two,

lets her complaints pool beneath her

and still can’t tell

if our blood runs the same color.

my people

* note this is just a first draft and its saturday here in seoul but im posting this for my thursday poem... ive not been writing these past weeks cuz words are stirring in me... this is only a draft its not complete...

- kim



my people

im your people

who exactly are MY people?



the ones with tans who know that theres a dolphin you can eat

and sand crabs you can catch in paper cups

and that worth avenue used to be the place for drugs?

who know that cobbler goes with breakfast

and the grits demand a pool of butter?

who remember polyster blues

and yellow carded tallies?



the ones who know that svyturys is the best

and that the real reason that 1492 matters is cuz its when

stiegl was first produced?

the ones who know the weight of a quid in their hand?

the ones who know a jordie from a manky?



my people?

im your people?

who exactly are my people?



the ones who love their PBR and premo

who call a casserole a hot dish

who are wedge organic?

who sit on stoops

and know what -50 F windchill feels like?



the ones who express through words

through body language gestures

who know the warmth of the light

shining from above

filling your very soul and being

as you do the thing you were born to do?

who understand when i say

"i miss the light"



my people?



you mean the south?

you mean the midwest?

you mean all the crevices of europe?

you mean the bus riders in merida?



my people?



you mean the ones who raised me?

the ones i do love?

the ones in oregon with the most beautiful garden in the world?



my people?

im one of you?



you mean the ones who flaunt rainbows like a flood just ended?

you mean the ones who cry out for equality?



im of of your people?

my people?

who exactly are my people?



the ones who live here

who look like ones from my other life?

the ones who fail to see that

theyre descended of the ones who created that line of divide between a people?

the ones who think they know

just because its been years?

but still walk with a swagger like this is theirs?

but we speak the same

and dress the same

and they brag of their prowress

telling me my people do not sweat

as my shirt is drenched in summer's humid heat



or you mean

my people

like



the ones i see each day

whom i cannot speak to

beyond head nods and

nervous mispronunciations

and confident askings for "mul' and "hana soju ju saeyo"



the ones who turned their backs on our mothers?

who push us to learn faster than we can?

who turn us into high ratings tv shows

and tell us how we're bitter



the ones whose acceptance of me

changes me

makes me better

makes me stronger?



my body is of this place

my blood is of this place

my entire dna was split in 45 degrees parallel

when my people sent me to those who say im their people now





my people?



im your people?



im one of you?



im yours?



we're the same?



only people that i can truly claim

are 200.000 others

some lost

some found

some somewhere inbetween trying to still find their people



kim thompson. 16.56 21 aug 2010 seoul, s.korea

www.thursdaypoems.blogspot.com

Haiku Giveaway Day II

Hi, I 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.

in lieu of...

in lieu of a poem listen to this interview on international adoption, korea, korean ibyangs, etc...

http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/console/p008ww0m

- kim thompson seoul, s. korea 13 august 2010

p.s. my brain is frozen hence the lack of poems... but soon there will be words

Poem For the Woman Who Thought Asking Dr. Laura a Race Question Was a Good Idea

http://today.msnbc.msn.com/id/38684474/?gt1=43001

"Schlessinger also said that if the caller did not have a sense of humor about race, she shouldn't have entered into an interracial marriage."

We had a dog once.
He was friendly enough
but always pissed on the rug--
just all over it.
We tried to train him not to,
gave him a shock collar,
rewards when he pissed outside,
even took him to a doggy therapist
but he kept pissing on the rug every time he got the chance.
We couldn't throw the rug out;
it had been in the family for years, was part of us now
so we cleaned it every week--sometimes twice--
and just did our best to tolerate the damn dog,
did our best to keep anything nice away from the rug.
He didn't see a difference between what was rug
and what was on or next to rug--
Mom said it had something to do with all dogs
being colorblind--I think this dog was just
too inbred to even see contours.
He'd just take a piss everywhere
and then sit there wagging his tail,
expecting you to take him for a walk.
He still does--that dog will live forever.
So don't get all angry if you leave your shoes on the rug
and the dog pisses all over them.
Look at that dog--that thing doesn't know any better.
He won't learn and
we can't just put him down.
Don't blame me--
I wanted a cat.

SPINELESS

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.

Untitled/I Ripped This Idea Off From Christy

He could live for weeks--months

on powdered gatorade and adrenaline.

I heard he built a truck, once, from the ground up,

out of things he found in the Pacific Northwest--

taught me how to drive a manual but my hands were too small

to grip the stick shift that was an evergreen or

ride out a clutch the size of Crater Lake.

I was frustrated but he read me my favorite story

for, like, the millionth time, sang me to sleep

and dreams of being a grown up.

Grayer now, weaver's hands, nurse's hands,

hands that built me a treehouse

move slower but, I suspect,

with more meaning--

weighted down by memories--

he finally begins his memoirs

but all I can read is

"Who says there are no heroes anymore?"

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

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.

monsoon memories of leif

19
20
feet propped up on the dash
filling your little white car
with blue grey smoke
sunroof opened
to let the night in
"the sky is never black... its deep blue"
everyone's asleep inside
but we're outside
inside your car
drinking beer
smoking cigarettes
and feeling so full of knowing
and yet so new
to this world
thats hanging overhead

and you tell me how
youre gonna play a song
thats gonna rip my heart right outside my
arse
and you push tape deck play

and this becomes the song for then
and the years to follow there
lying on the rooftop
drinking wine
smoking cigars like we're refined
speaking poems
and everything we think we know

who spends their 20s lying on castle rooftops
up above the trees
in the middle of the night
crawling out windows
listening to ben
staring at the stars
watching satellites spin in orbit
to the point of something beyond terrestrial

here below the cars - another friday
somewhere beneath the seoul
the sky has gone from night to monsoon grey

knowing now how ive been
carried

home


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J9I9M4H9n_I


kim thompson. friday. 23 july 2010. seoul. s.korea

IOU

I failed to post a poem last week because I was busy releasing this. I fail to post one this week because I don't want to post an embarrassing first draft of a poem I care about--it's a poem about getting manslaughtered on my way home through downtown.

pair

we're a pair of headphones
held together by a melody
we're a pair of handcuffs
held together by a felony

we're a pair of earrings
held together by a connection
we're a pair of headlights
held together by a direction

we're a pair of chopsticks
held together by a hand
we're a pair of crutches
held together by a stand

we're a pair of dice
held together by a chance
we're a pair of shoes
held together by a dance

we're a pair of lungs
held together by a breath
we're a pair of tombstones
held together by a death

we're a pair of contracts
held together by a decision
we're a pair of eyes
held together by a vision

love

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.