“Half-Korean” by Patty Paine

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The Sounding Machine by Patty PaineI was six when Charlie Hunter stuck his finger
in my face: Is your mother from North
or South Korea? I guessed South.
It’s a good goddamn thing.
Ten when Andrea Lombardy beat me
at the bus stop for being a gook.
My mother forbid Korean so I craved her
forbidden tongue, and would slip
from bed to listen to her and her friends play Hwatoo.
They sat cross-legged on a bamboo mat,
fans of glossy cards in their hands,
their conversation punctuated
by the thwack of cards against mat.
English staggered from their throats,
but Korean burst open
like ripe fruit. Between hands,
chopsticks speared bits
of squid, and rice edged into mouths
from upraised plates. After, I’d steal
into my mother’s room to slide the Hwatoo cards
from a black lacquer and mother-of-pearl case.
I wanted to feel the slick plastic
between my fingers. I wanted to hold
fragile lotus blossoms, swollen plums
and larchwood in my palms.

–Patty Paine,
The Sounding Machine
Accents Publishing

Previous posts about The Sounding Machine and Patty Paine:

Patty PainePatty Paine is the author of Feral (Imaginary Friend Press), Elegy & Collapse (Finishing Line Press), and co-editor of Gathering the Tide: An Anthology of Contemporary Arabian Gulf Poetry (Garnet Publishing & Ithaca Press). Her poems, reviews, and interviews have appeared in Blackbird: an online journal of literature and the arts, The Atlanta Review, Gulf Stream, The Journal and many other publications. She is the founding editor of Diode Poetry Journal, and is an assistant professor of English at Virginia Commonwealth University Qatar where she teaches writing and literature, and is assistant director of Liberal Arts & Sciences.

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