EMOTIONAL VEHICLES
234 FACES
after Anna Swirszczynska
When I ride the train
in Seoul, South Korea,
the people do not glance
at my skin, they gaze
at my hands.
I laugh with my hands,
I swallow the world
with my hands.
All my hands shout.
I did not make them,
so it is peculiar to call them my own.
Each tip picks a nostril
and thumps a forehead.
Across from me,
a man stares without shame.
I stare back in envy at his shamelessness.
Each day, 234 faces gawk
as if I had ten hands.
Yes, this is how they look at me.
They have never seen so many hands
on one man before.
They look at my palms
and try to read them.
They say it’s like reading a poorly written novel.
Count their countenance
on 90 fingers, brush by them
as I walk on my ten hands.
My arms ache
as if curling weights,
burdened by 8 pounds of ten hands.
When I speak in sign (as we all do),
each pair talks over the other.
A lot of noise these hands make.
MY FATHER’S TOOLS
I was every bit
of my father—baptized in the driveway
in a pool of motor oil,
his tools next to him
glimmering like precious stones—
“I saved up for a year, boy. Treat these
tools like I treat you.”
FLYING WEST/EAST TO YOU
When you love somebody
a long long ways away,
your soul unlatches its grip
as you sleep, venturing off
to meet your lover’s soul.
The souls will embrace,
hold conversation,
buying time until our bodies arrive.
Right now, my spirit creeps
across the Pacific floor,
on its way to my ribcage
with the remnants of a heart in its hands.
It drags its feet through sea stars and crab.
In long distance love,
generally, one soul is willing
to go further than another’s.
Mine made it from San Diego to Japan
while hers stood at the city limits
of Seoul scratching at an invisible wall.
In the port of Karatsu,
my soul received a letter
and it turned back, east,
back to the body
whence it came.
Where the soul goes,
the body soon follows.
Sometimes our souls would walk ahead of us,
holding hands and laughing down the canyon
to lie in bed, waiting for our bodies.
Where the soul goes,
the body follows—
this has become a problem for me.
I sold my possessions,
my passport is punched—
flying west, which soon becomes east,
at which point, I don’t know,
I can imagine my soul looking up
as a plane roars past overhead.
Soulless, I fly west/east to you.
