An Adopted Korean Girl’s Birth Mother’s Body

Consider
your hair and

skin oil, sweet
potatoes

and mung bean—
that you die

young, always.
Because I

separated
from you,

closeness
is symmetry

with evenly
developed

muscle groups.
I tried jajangmyeon (자장면)

the “deep fried sauce,” the
“spring taste.”

Tusk-like-teethed
animals are

being hunted.
 
 
 

Bo Schwabacher's poems have appeared in CutBank, diode, Muzzle, Redivider, Red Paint Hill Poetry Journal, Rust+Moth, Vinyl, and elsewhere. Her first book of poems, A Korean Bathhouse in Dream City, is being released by YesYes Books. She teaches at Northern Arizona University.