Angel & Hannah

Addicted
to da feel of his fingers, soft on her neck, his Juicy Fruit breath.
He rolls White Owl joints and blows clouds into her mouth
kissing her, tickling her, licking her, nuzzling her.
They keep each other happy, safe, and warm.
(Yes. Here Angel and Hannah ~ nestled in the calm before the storm.)

Broken Vessels
After I drop him off, I drive
home down Cypress Avenue
to the Interboro Expressway.
My stomach clenches at a tight turn,
a sharp fear of losing him
in this slick, lipglossed city.
A grainy dusk descends on all
car roofs, silvering them
into a black & white movie,
but I’m no starlet. God. I breathe slow,
clench the wheel, knowing I’ll stay,
whether he hurts me, whether we
skid, flip, lie trapped in a box of flame —
my heart’s strapped in, belt etched with his name.


Home
Mi casa, tu casa, mi vida. Come. Stay with me.
Cada noche, he sings, Let’s make a home together, ma.
We grown enough, yo. I want you Here with me.
Pretty please, mi reina. He bats his thick, lush lashes,
coquettish as a drag queen, takes her hand. Kisses
it, daintily, tenderly. How can she resist?
She giggles. Ay, Angel. I’d Love to, cariño. Pero my parents…
she sighs…Look, ma. When you ready
to be free ~ come to me. Estoy aquí. Esperándote.
They lay curled in bed like two commas
facing each other, quiet, creating
a heart, a nest, a space for Home.
No crazy K-drama,
stress, or tension, just a warmth, pulsing
like a rosebud about to bloom. Sí, she says,
and holds him dearly, like a mama.


I’m…(migration)
Maybe flying is in her
blood and bones ~ great-aunts & cousins
flying to America to escape the trauma
of the forgotten Corean war
that left her mom orphaned at five & changed her family’s fate ~
burying Celadon vases & twenty-four-karat gold hairpins
in jars of kimchee, a hive of bustling, displaced cousins & refugees
her father took in, plus all his friends & neighbors (still alive)
arrive until his house swells, from eight to twelve to fifty.
His lovely wife dies of stress, claustrophobia, war, & poverty.
Hannah’s mother runs from orphanhood, from a colonized country,
to escape chaos, grief, & molotov cocktails, to create
a new life, free of conflict, vicious spirals, struggles, & strife.
It goes deep, kid. She could be running
from the violence her father carried from that war too, into
his body, into his home, buried
rage from leaving a country stolen &
conquered & raped & pillaged by
the Japanese and then Americans, fake friends
who took & took & used the same old divide
& conquer formula to occupy one half
of their divided country for more than half a century. What pride
can one truly carry when one is country — less?
All these Korean Americans, cut in half, divided inside, then hyphened —!
surviving, trying to thrive in the land of the colonizer ~ sigh ~
Bob Marley say, You’re running & you’re running
& you’re running away, but you can’t run away from yourself…
She’s running from a broken home,
running from her broken home-land,
her cold orphan mother & her divided mother ~ land,
cut into two sides by Russia and Amerikkka, and
she’s running into the arms of the first man-child
who’s ever felt like Home,
who makes her soul feel less alone,
good to smell & warm to hold.
She’s running from her parents, who are mute,
who suffered so much they refuse to speak about Why ~
(but that simply creates another Divide
that I bridge for You, dear Reader, but imagine
how lost! how empty she feels inside with no stories, maps, mirrors,
or songs to guide her in this new world).
She Inherited a rage that lives
like a bomb in her body —
she inherited da stones of Han, and is spending her life unloading them
from her bowl, to become Light enough to take flight and disappear.


Rice Grains (Halmoni)
Aigu, gunyun bah. She’s a disgrace —
a shame to the whole Shin family.
Look at her, kissing that black boy,
black as burnt rice. Look!
I want to scratch out my mound grave,
cross ocean, slap her cheek,
make her kneel on a bed of rice grains.
Whip her calves with a pine switch
until she bleeds bloodseeds.
Daughter of my firstborn son, born
on foreign land, can’t even hold
my words in her mouth without spilling
them like wellwater…
she needs a living halmoni to slap her sane,
make her respect her family name.


7th Period (Hannah)
I wait like a tiger lily in an overrun
garden, trying hard to be hidden
yet dazzling, fixing my burnt, frayed
hair. Late, he saunters over,
sharp as a grass-blade. When I lean
against him, a stiff bulge in his Polo
jeans turns me dew-moist. I learn
too late it’s not his heat, but a silver .380
he uses to kill stop signs with a hunter’s
flair in weeded corners of Queens. A peek
of silver-blue, he puts my hand there.
Hard. My girls stare. God, I long
to glint. Cock the trigger,
game for anything.


Private Dancer
The door’s locked. Put it on, she dares,
flings her Guess denim-lycra dress
at his feet. He sucks his teeth, nah. She caresses
his earlobe. Please. He huffs…straps off buckles. She
stares as he struts from dresser to bed with a bony hip-jut,
arm extended like a thin brushstroke of tree.
He bats foxy lashes to throw shadows over his cheek-
bones, puckers lips, runs his rough
palms over her décolletage, then strips
further. To her cherry-red negligee. Totters in fake heels,
flings an invisible boa up at the ceiling. She
laughs, imagines feathers swan-diving past her eyes as he
skips over now. Done with fantasy, he kneels
beside her. Hard. Naked. On his bony knees.


One Tree
Hannah wants to take Angel into dark woods,
away from his bleak block with its one thin
tree — god, one tree! Sick
smell of needles and burnt, cooked crack.
If she could, she’d hike him up the Catskill trails
her mother led her through as a girl,
so he, too, can smell sweet loam,
let his feet find path through stone,
leaf, root, each step Godsure…
to stretch his wingspan wider,
beyond the wire mesh of Hart Street’s
metal aviary ~ Hannah daydreams
lounging on a milk crate, as Angel
hustles coke under the oak’s weak shade.


Tattoo
Ay, who