make it real

we sit in silence
the kind of silence you find in church
when the air is electric with prayer
we are hopeful without function

my tongue is specked with diamond tastebuds
cutting airwaves with cinematic glory

make it real
i say

make it real
and say that i will never be back in this room with you

i want you to make it real for me

things i've learned being in this relationship

10 things i've learned in this relationship

1) i've learned i am not the only person
who thinks super nintendo is the best console ever made
2) i've learned how to stare at an itunes visualizer for two hours
3) i've learned how to fold 20 white tees in under 7 minutes
4) i've learned that a freckle under your eye means good luck
5) i've learned the extent of linguistic colonization
6) i've learned how to make adobo
7) i've learned more about kobe bryant than any other baller in the league
8) and like kobe, i've learned how to ask for forgiveness
9) like vanessa, i've learned how to forgive

but i haven't learned how to forget
i haven't forgotten about the gold earring i found under your bed
i haven't forgotten about the insufficient geography of my blood
i haven't forgotten broken ribs
i know broken ribs
i know how to cry silently and without movement
notify the saints
because you've been sleeping next to a weeping statue

i'm only what i think you want me to be
a wireless marionette

my chest cavity is a trojan horse
there is a terracotta army burrowed inside my heart
that awakens every time we make love
so every time we make love
i expect twice as much war

i am used to sleeping too close to the fire
burns are medals of honor
and i am a decorated veteran
subconsciously bent on battle
rubbing wounds with gunpowder and polishing my steel tongue

with us
anywhere is fair game
open fire in your kitchen, my car, in class
weaving invisible nets of dialogue into catch 22's and
releasing land mines tucked under our tongues

no one ever wins
this is the bloodiest stalemate to date

our circulatory systems rewire themselves and
the fiber in our bones realign to adjust to the trauma
our voiceboxes pitch frequencies that shake the overcast blanket
loose of forgotten constellations

cause pointing out falling stars turns our bodies into white flags
and it's only perfect that we still find ways to sacrifice
even when we're fighting

we always ask each other
why we keep trying

10) i've learned how to be a martyr
but not a savior
our time together will be the latest addition to the crusades

they say holiness is not found between lovers
but i discovered prayer in your palm lines
your chest was a seashell
when i held my ear against you
i could hear whispers of scripture flowing through your veins

1992

a regular heartbeat consists of two sounds
a common year is 365 days
there were 366 in 1992
leap years are like irregular heartbeats
sometimes, they are benign, at others, fatal

some claim ice cube became a prophet in 1992
in his song, black korea, he states
"pay respect to the black fist
or we'll burn your store down to a crisp"
as if lyrical fuel spilled out of stereos onto the street
turning those cracks in the sidewalks
into moats of gasoline thirsty for a match
and it came

on april 29th, 1992
4 white lapd officers were acquitted of beating a black man, rodney king

we dust off mental reels of grainy video
taped by the usual swarm of helicopters circling south central
and remember white news anchors entitling the LA riots
the WAR between KOREANS and BLACKS

images of brown bodies throwing rocks through store windows
koreans locking onto guns they'd never held before
and the police? they disappeared faster than the liquor stores
that were burned to the ground

it's no surprise, right?
they left us there, to kill each other
so who's protecting who?

in 1992, i turned 3 years old
didn't know how to speak english
what a court trial was
or who the police were
i wish i knew more back then
i wish i knew what leap years and irregular heartbeats were
i wish i knew english so i could have scripted a prayer to god
asking him to take back one of those days he created
just this once

i wonder what would have happened
if the trial was a day earlier
or a day later

but i'm grown now,
enough to know that chance is not enough to stop
the armies from amassing in LA
chance is only an interruption
a glitch in the space/time continuum

with that said, ice cube is not a prophet
but a lyrical barometer
and me? i'm grown now
enough to admit that i don't know shit
about what it was like to be a black man in compton during the 90s

but i do know what it was like to be a korean girl
growing up in her parents' store in south seattle in the 90s
so mr ice cube
do you know my mother father brother
every single one of my cousins
you call "oriental chinese penny-pinching motherfuckers"

do you know of the wars braided in the fibers of our bones
stitched into our eyelids
and shoved in our wombs
do you know what a landmine explosion tastes like
what napalm spray sounds like

while you cheer the incineration of livelihoods
and spit in the faces of grieving mothers
i never once blame you

how can i curse combatants for actions
when we're all pawns of the generals?

the dress

yesterday i saw your ex girlfriend
and from looking at her
i can begin to understand why you want me to wear
a dress
why you want me to trade in my sneakers for heels
my fitted caps for bangs
my words for silence
my words are collections of knick knacks
crowding your living room walls and end tables
it's only a matter of time until you decide to downsize

maybe that's why you never bring me around your friends
you say they're not into "social awareness"

i always wonder do you see my light skin as a benefit?
my assertiveness just a turn-on?
since i go both ways, i must be fucking for two

outspoken women are attractive
but inconvenient when their words work against you
and you thought you washed out all that social conditioning

so paint this picture with me
if we were ever to go out with them
i'd be wearing that dress and
you'd be head to toe in the finest camoflauge
they'd never be able to tell we speak of
white-supremacist-capitalist-patriarchy

would this remind you money can't buy ancestral amnesia

what you fail to recognize is that our histories cannot be contained
by bleached textbooks and glass
you want to forget about
the desecration of our mental landscapes
so i try to remind you
about rice fields turned mass graves
rivers swallowing run off military waste
and the off white seams stitched into the gowns of gi brides

i thought your roots had meaning
more than something to be proud of during pacquiao fights
and definitely more than a row of books on your shelf
see i thought my roots had meaning

even though
sometimes i want to wear that dress
let's call it gold
i'll be your trophy for the night
your champagne glass, bubbly
intoxicating exoticism
will be you happy then?

cause these days i have trouble making eye contact with myself
mirrors are constant reminders of hypocrisy
my reflection locks me in
a mosquito in resin
the silence inside self conservation is comfortable
and tempting
a frequency all too familiar

tell me, do you feel safe
with me
when you recognize the stone binaries carved into their mindsets
will you still hush me when i speak
and pull my waistline leash tighter until i'm straight
it's only a matter of time until it rains
and i won't be gold anymore, just yellow

to all the boys i've loved and will love

part i
the gold earring underneath your bed is actually a port key
now if you don't know what a port key is
please refer to the 4th installment of harry potter
a portkey is an object that transports someone from one place to another
just by touching it

back to this gold earring though
we'd spent that november morning in bed
when i noticed its metallic smile shimmering from the shadows
upon closer observation
tracing the edges of its unfamiliar shape
i was transported back to every time i received a lie
oblivious or suspicious
pre-packaged or naked
freshly coated with gold or rust
there is a room in my mind that hosts all of this deception
boxes of lonely jewelry missing its other half
the stench of perfumed bedsheets
this is where all those deleted texts and voicemails go to hide
where skeletons feast on fireflies
where grapes grow thick and heavy
and i can't wait for sweetness
i want the truth as sour as it comes
but there you go again
rolling through a rolodex of laminated phrases
it was always excuses and never reasons

part ii

after playing mom to 3 different boys
i've learned to be selfish
yet
there is a point in every relationship when i unlearn this

falling back into old patterns like
grooves sliding into familiarity
gut feelings become familiar
eels swim up my intestinal tracts as i send out doves every 30 days
we are noah's ark on repeat
repetitive like loading clips into guns
and waiting for the familiar cock to crack silence

there is a point in every relationship when i fall
into the cracks lining your palms
when i want to know more about you
than you know about me
because love only feels right with collateral

it only feels right when i'm being ignored
when fidelity is put on hold
and trust is postponed

this is the only kind of love i've ever known

but i want to know familiar like
scars and birthmarks
like the freckle under your eye
your eyes are two circular amber anchors
i am sinking and falling back into old patterns
familiar like our bodies are everchanging rubiks technology
when everything always fits

part iii

to you, acknowledging history is voyeurism
i used to watch my mother finger through a dining room table
plastered with cellphone bills and receipts
you could have mistaken her for a detective
trying to catch those fireflies swimming between bedsheets and passenger seats
burning black holes into her heart
like cigarette burns into arms and armchairs

what made you think it was okay to lie
to feed me salt instead of sugar
when you knew i didn't know the difference

part iv

every night
i cut the moon in half
and give you the bigger piece

ocean

42 degrees north latitude, 180 degrees west longitude
the halfway point between korea and america
is where i call home

even then, this is not accurate
though i was born a US citizen
my blood contains traces of hanguk soil
so can you imagine what an entire circulatory system looks like
stretched across 5686 miles of ocean?
you could tightrope walk along my vascular tubing
play me like a bass and pluck the frequencies
of what means to be alien
the other
always a foreigner

when asked about my nationality
"american" is never the right answer
not even when
i pledged my allegiance
exchanged kimchi for burgers, duk for cookies
korean school for little league softball
and never once uttered my middle name
suhyung, korean for flowing water,
in fear of opening xenophobic floodgates to racist currents
that swallowed my tongue, my lungs, my muscle
and forced me to learn to breathe underwater
pushed me into the middle of the ocean, where i reside
42 degrees north latitude, 180 degrees west longitude
no "american" could never the right answer

my aunt begs to differ
she refers to me as the white american
white american
acts as lashes against my yellow skin that used to yearn
for such identification with handprints of achievement
taunting us from the other side of the glass ceiling
soo-moh, i'm not angry at your blindness
because we share the same story

we both know
cousins sharing songpyon during harvest
sam-il oon-dong bloody fists pounding for liberation
the taste of busan sunsets
makeshift wedding gowns of war brides and orphaned amerasians
churches turned incinerators
screams of burning men and the smell of martyrdom
a baby crying in front of soviet tanks
our families bullet ridden and hung like laundry in town squares
outstretched hands between sisters and brothers
across proxy war barbed wire
now, across the pacific ocean

i know you know
what a riot really feels like
the smell of edward lee's blood
the weight of his mother's heart
the absence of police and ambulance sirens
how to differentiate the sound of breaking glass, from shattering dreams

tell me what's so different between me and you

tell me, when your grandchildren come home with stories of playground racism
will you trade kimchi for burgers and korean school for little league
when they lose their language
will you call them white americans

let's face it
we both wear resentment like christmas ornaments clinging to the walls of our throats
and despite what you may say, we speak the same language
broken english, broken korean
both broken
after our days are done, we both return to the same neighborhood
on the underwater outskirts of acceptance
42 degrees north latitude, 180 degrees west longitude
the halfway point between korea and america

d.m.s.

i cannot see the moon
but i can feel its stare
how did i write you such truths
when you never were

i fell into the eye of our hurricane

let the storms hands press against my back
until
it
was
too
m u c h

how did i write you such truths
when this never was