I Wed a Toy Bride by Yi Sang

This is my favorite Korean poem translated by James Kimbrell.

October

One of our favorite movies was Girl with a Pearl Earring. We both adored Vermeer; we read the novel by Tracy Chevalier, and watched the movie one night after my cousin went to bed. She let me take sips of her coffee (3 teaspoons of cream,  2 teaspoons of sugar) and in the middle of the movie, she ran into her room and brought her pearl earrings out and I helped her put them on. She told me that if my ears were pierced, we could have worn one each and both be girls with a pearl earring. 

My aunt, who died before I turned 22, was sad but beautiful like a sugar cube melting in lukewarm water. 

The little one from Parma

I'm not a fan of Parmigianino's most famous work, Madonna with the Long Neck, but I really love this self portrait by him. John Ashbery's epic poem, Self-portrait in a Convex Mirror, is named after this painting and I'm attaching a link to where you can read the award-winning poem(it won all three major Amercian poetry prizes). It really is an extraordinary poem. I once had a dream about it.

You can find the full text here: http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/self-portrait-in-a-convex-mirror/

What I'm into right now

I've been thinking a lot in Korean lately, I don't know why, but it kind of feels nice.
Another interesting Korean word: 청춘 (which means 'blue spring' and often refers to one's early 20s).
I laugh and I grieve and I party and I think and I don't think and I say things I regret and I cry and I feel like dying but I feel young and alive more than ever. I spent this morning being naked in my apartment walking around drinking chai tea and thinking about "A la recherche de Gertrude Stein" by Frank O'Hara.


That's what I'm into right now: Being young and alive.


Blue spring cool.

SWINGIN' PARTY

If being afraid is a crime, we hang side by side
at the swinging party down the line.

June

She smoked cigarettes during those two years I lived with her and the whole time I had absolutely no clue.
She never ate but drank five cups of coffee everyday. Even when she came to pick me up whenever I called, painted my toes in red every week("it's the only acceptable color on toes") and watched Project Runway with me on lazy afternoons, I could still picture her having affairs with really attractive men.
One day she asked for a picture of me and kept it in her wallet. I sometimes wonder where that picture is right now.

She hasn't been in a single dream since.

When she wanted to talk to me about something serious, her voice always brightened up. As if she's trying to be a clown; a clown who wears outlandish makeup and costumes and juggles, walks a tightrope, and does tricks gracefully on a flying trapeze to make his audience forget about gravity. We both knew we were never going to be real astronauts and be in space where there is no gravity, so we kept on being clowns. Trying to convince each other to forget about something.

I miss her. She became the 'gravity.' Except I don't ever want to forget about it.

Night (밤)

In Korean, we often describe a very late and dark night simply as an 'ambitious night (야심한 밤).'

So on this ambitious night, I'm sitting on my living room floor, watching Sex and the City, and occasionally dipping my right pinky into a jar of honey (I ran out of apples).

Cheun-duk Pi, a Korean poet, described May as a fresh twenty-one year old's face right after being washed with cold water. I think about him on some mornings washing my face, and I feel like the month of May (and I blush). 

And I have a sudden urge to drive to the beach and write in the sand

得了愛情痛苦 (I have gained, the pain of affection)

失了愛情痛苦 (I have given up, the pain of affection),

lines from a poem by a Chinese poet who died very young. But I will drive back, still young and alive.