An Adopted Korean Girl’s Good Luck

In Korean, 바람 relates to “wind” and “affair”

so don’t feed your husband chicken wings

 

or give a lover shoes. I’ve been mispronouncing gobbledygook

& wondering about Korean fried chicken

 

as well as old delicacies—chicken stewed in dates and ginseng.

I flew to America with Hodori, the 1988 Seoul Olympics mascot,

 

and narrow boat shoes. I cried the entire flight.

 

바람 wind + 피다 to smoke =바람피다 to cheat

my birth-father ran home so fast, the wind burned.

 
 
 
 

 

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.