How nearly can I  
inhabit someone  
else’s body? I don’t  
have any money.  
Prostrate, scrolling  
through other people’s  
clothes, I’m wearing  
the tearable pink dress 
I met you in. It came  
taped up in a box 
that smelled like house  
and once held water filters.  
These truncated mannequins  
I imagine angels appear as— 
headless torsos, voices  
emanating from necks— 
scare me like you did.  
Still I let divine will  
fill me like a windsock,  
commencing a delirious  
motion. Now my love is a line  
pulled by no current.  
Thanks for your purchase!  
wrote the woman in Queens 
on scalloped cardstock. 
Pulling her dress over  
my head, light sieved  
through sheer silk  
and I saw the threads  
binding my delight. 

O Me! O life! of the questions of these recurring,
Of the endless trains of the faithless, of cities fill’d with the foolish,
Of myself forever reproaching myself, (for who more foolish than I, and who more faithless?)
Of eyes that vainly crave the light, of the objects mean, of the struggle ever renew’d,
Of the poor results of all, of the plodding and sordid crowds I see around me,
Of the empty and useless years of the rest, with the rest me intertwined,
The question, O me! so sad, recurring—What good amid these, O me, O life?

Answer.

That you are here—that life exists and identity,
That the powerful play goes on, and you may contribute a verse.

I’m Nobody! Who are you?

Are you – Nobody – too?

Then there’s a pair of us!

Don’t tell! they’d advertise – you know!

How dreary – to be – Somebody!

How public – like a Frog –

To tell one’s name – the livelong June –

To an admiring Bog!

^{Seoul, May 1980}

cherry blossoms are opening.    
Pink clouds canopy the road to town,    
wind shakes out sakura rain like piggy-bank coins.    
A new school year erupts.

I walk the long road to university.    
Cherry petals confetti my neck,    
my shoulders, like feathers.    
Gathering into silken wings.

The Japanese planted cherry trees    
when they came, tossing seeds that cavity    
her womb like spent bullets.    
More sinister now than tank tracks

And wreckages. Even sudden beauty and rebirth    
a Japanese image.    
The Korean girls stolen and    
numerous as planted seeds.

Japan calls these trees Tokyo Cherry,    
says their petals represent Japanese soldiers’    
brief but beautiful lives.    
I learned so a previous spring and wondered

What other miracles and newness    
were so planted? How did Korean    
spring occur before Japan    
came with flourishing destruction.

What is a first day or university    
without washes of pink and white    
without green men glittering    
black guns and boots mapping the path?

Tall whispering grasses also planted    
to cultivate order and grow goodness and cleanness    
forever. As I enter my city I see    
one in ironed uniform

stalk-still inside a gust of blossoms.    
The string inside me catches    
as blushing petals ceremoniously collect    
on his blood-green kevlar.