Say good-bye to dirty
unhygienic finger nails Please
pardon the dirty chronically
dirty nails

dirty dirty dirty There's a
cicada on my dirty nails

Those are not my dirty nails.

those damn dirty
lions Please
pardon the dirty nails.

I am just a dirty boy.

The Korea grass
behind mountain
burning pampas
(behind mountain
The Korea grass
a mountain,
mountain grass.
Littleleaf.
Korean Mountain.
Korean Mountain.
Korean

feather
While waiting on
Korean Alps
(and mountain
and "Mountain
It is native to
Korean Mountain.
Her works capture the
Korean Mountain.

They had to eat barbecued
Korean Mountain
(behind mountain
burning "grass
The "Korea grass,
PAMPAS.

I go to the
Korean Mountain
I suckle
The Korea grass

I face my own mortality once every week or so at Namtaeryeong Station

It's not often I take the blue line home (it's only a 20-minute
walk to Sadang, and after all the bus is faster)

but at just after 4:20 pm Namtaeryeong is deserted, the trains
come only every 15 minutes or so,
I like that, and the escalator goes down that
unbearable distance between the tickets and the platform.

Walls painted like the pastel
anus of the 70s, anywhere else
I'd walk. Everywhere else the escalators come
in blocks of 20 or so, but Namtaeryeong is deep. It's

best if there's no one else in sight, it's best if I'm wearing
heels that day. I stand still, the wait is unbearable. It will take
my whole life to get to the bottom, and then where will I be?
It will take my whole life for a train to come. I like that.

It's best if a middle-aged woman
stares at me from the other end of the platform. It's best
if I have a clementine with me that day.

like white silk, like orange gummy bears

they were sorting crabs when we arrived:

live crabs, two
piles: male,
female, tossed into tubs, belly-
up, crawling at the air.
which is the opposite, exactly, of
yesterday, your hands tremblingly
on my head (I leaned
into them, I found it hard to
breathe, I wondered what
it would be like to have a live
crab in my hair) -
we bought females (the sweeter
flesh, the egg sac) belly-up (beautiful
bellies, purplue. kkote geh, they
call them, flower) still

alive, wrapped in

newspaper. I didn't see them again until

I ate them,

I ate them,

I cracked them wide open and

ate.

sweet potato poem #1:

one reason on the side of regret for my

clipped-short nails: it would be easier to

hold these long

lumpy pockets of, oh

fuck, hot

skins like velvet I peel away in

threads, what blood

red would look like if you smeared

mud into it. You'd say "don't play with your

fucking food" (I think)

but you wouldn't

say "fucking." The "fucking" is

mine. I

make a mountain of

skin (skin-san. no! gwanak

-san, I mean, I'll

climb it soon). In this
place, I climb mountains.

Here,

I play with my fucking food.

melon. collie.

I don't know how to tell you about the way
I sometimes unbutton my pink
plaid all the way down to the pink
bow between my two D-
cups (yes, D! after all that fuss). Then
I go out. Because despite
everything, some days I wake up wanting
someone (a man, I mean) to look at my
breasts like they're the one thing that can
save him.

It lasted for nearly 45 minutes today. I'd
taken the subway all the way to the river, walked
for a while. There was an old man - I stopped, took out the old
men's windbreaker Park Mi-Ran gave me, covered myself.

You must have guessed that my melan-
choly would set in soon (though I hate that word, as much as I love
melons, and collies named Duke). An old
woman was worried for me on the subway today, I
don't know why. Near Hapjeong Station (hop. jung.) she offered me
her seat, and I didn't know how to say "Look, can't you see? I've got my
city legs now" in Korean. The train drivers don't

like how I stand at the edge of the platform, right
where the train slams into the station. I wish I could tell them not to
worry, it's just that I like how the power of it makes me
gasp a little (the same way I gasped when the plane landed, & thought
"I've made it somehow, this is Korea"). But they've

heard stories from their friends, they know what those
spots are, the brownish
stains that won't come out.

Shy-Pam waxes melodramatic,

or, on how exhausting it is for me to constantly hold myself open to people/the world:

Remember the day before
I left? I told you I was nervous but
what I meant was: help,
my sternum's been cracked open. Though,
[they said] this will hurt less than two
holes under your breasts, though [they
[promised] here, can't you breathe better
now?

Later, the clamp got stuck [though, etc.] Self-
locking [they said], stainless steel. Sterilized, no
fever, don't
concern yourself, [they said] though the streets are
dirty here and, I don't know,
the swine flu? No wires sewing me together, chest
spread-eagled - I can't breathe better now, I
can't breathe now, I
can't.