This is Korea

At first light
its towering apartments slowly yawn,
donning heavy coats like stoic sentinels prepared
to stand their guard
o’er this land of morning calm.
At this time, as if on cue,
stooped ajumas appear from every corner,
their wrinkled faces like the veils
of folded origami.

The first to come are farmers’ wives,
known by soundless ways which they
unfurl their street-side perches.
Pulling out their hidden bowls,
they carefully arrange their bunched green spinach
and tangled garlic stalks
as off’rings to the day.

On the street,
littered with its coded message,
the expansive reek of rotting produce
seeps into the air.
With it the inimitable scent
of kimchi
permeates the nooks and crannies,
mixing with unwanted refuse
to form a shroud,
unmistakable and faintly noxious,
that blankets sidewalks like a soupy,
aromatic fog.

Further still, in hidden sideway stalls,
pig’s severed heads are lined up neatly.
Vacant eyes stare into nothing,
as though assembled for the morning
meeting.

At the corner of the street,
the man who sells
his miniature egg-and-batter sweets
is huddling
inside his tiny booth
like an imprisoned hermit.
He witnesses stray taxis race,
their drivers packed so tightly in their tiny shells,
impatiently awaiting
time
to rush into their next arrival.

Motorbikes buzz by on sidewalks, turning
on impossibly curved angles,
at once rushing in and out of crowds
and floating through unmoving cars.
Once, a motorbike rode sideways on a shop’s face
and then up onto the vaulted ceiling
of the sky.

Slumb’ring shops begin
to awaken and uncurl their folding iron gates
like retracting fans.
The waffle girl is first,
but focused inwardly:
Quietly she concentrates behind
her thick black hair,
which covers skin of light-brown cream.
Masterfully, she turns her hot irons over,
like a Vegas dealer issuing
his playing cards
at table.

A group of schoolgirls giggles by,
a solid, uniformed pack,
whose faces are absorbed
by thick, black glasses.
Beside them is a modern woman
walking by on tips of high-heeled stilts,
somehow ignoring shrieks from shrunken feet
as she parades about
in delicate stultification.

Old men,
some of which are toothless
and wobbling unsteadily
as if their legs
were attached to shanty-carts,
set out collecting discard relics
of cardboard and forgotten bottles.
They carry massive, caged carts behind them
like collections of their treasures
from in heaven.

At night,
the businessmen come out
from office cages
dressed in mesmerizing, shiny suits.
After a bit of time,
the soju starts
to leak out of their pours and pools
into confused, disordered speech.
They then become some painful way of being,
difficult to look upon.

Wand'ring into spiraled apple orchards,
the silent currents
of lofty temples rise
up out of twisting mountainside
like vast and holy roots.
One monk chants alone,
his cool, metallic voice
buzzing like electric current
which absorbs all sound
with its smooth, harmonic resonance.

At last, the sun has set
on the land of morning calm.
Off in the distance, blazing
neon crosses rise
up like florescent funeral pyres,
burning holes into the sky.

a collaboration between the author and Brandon Russell
images compiled by Brandon, fall 2009-summer 2010
rhythm added by author, winter 2011