

	Paisley taught in Korea before Wyoming ...

paisley rekdal

Paisley explains the inspiration for the poem that follows: "Before I moved to Korea I tried to find a decent Korean grammar textbook for myself but could only find a slender little Korean language pick-up handbook called, appropriately, Making Out in Korean. All the italicized lines in the poem are actual pick-up lines culled from the book, though left in English. At the same time I was reading Making Out in Korean I was also reading an essay on color-blindness, and the two texts wrapped themselves together into this poem."

Making Out in Korean

Are you alone? Because Earth tilts and thus
winter wears its same face yearly in a sky

distinct from summer's and, in 1998,
you are reading, Saturday, 10 A.M.

the Thursday paper you've put off; so Did you come alone? no translation guides the shy consigned

to the black hole each party becomes.
Because there are people whose single

world consists of gray but for whom "gray"
has no meaning because Your breasts are

beautiful and retrospectives of light, dark - the changeable
shadings case immutable as a brain's conal glows;

just as "snow" means everything and nothing to those
obsessed with its surfaces and loving you,

stranger, has a vocabulary both abstract and distinct
to this beige room, this street corner where

Oh, I'm so embarrassed I wear a dress
the growl of neon; so

I have all the colorful phrases of the world generally used
to turn to your specific. The cars here are blue.

They've covered the streets with vegetables. And
though Your eyes are stunning

this time believe me, It's the truth because isn't
each season winter and every street

blue with cars and cabbages? Aren't all kitchens
sewn like Thebes with plastic cups and phone numbers?

Tell me the truth. Isn't it summer now
in Australia and the real world monochrome,

not variegated? I think of you in your white clothes others
term "gray," the expectation that makes my eyes

call your eyes "brown."
I am learning to associate with steel wool.

Because every day someone drowns
Learning to swim while the rest of us must

reinvent the word or memorize
forgotten hues of fruit, so

I'm star-gazing these configured signs as clues
to your desire till "Kim's Appliances"

becomes I want to suck your boots
Berlitzed to commonplace "I love you."

Wanting you means wanting to inhale a universe.
I'm here on this street corner telling you

a thousand ways Marry me how winter feels in a mouth
devoid of seasons; now, the taste of oranges.

Tomorrow, you're out alone as usual, shopping
for vegetables. I'm out too, 1998,

walking in my favorite public garden at night
because I fear the color day calls "grass."

Listen, I'm telling you someone in the Ganges just pulled
his first successful backstroke. It is summer

in Australia, dawn in Maine. Don't give up on me. I'm really alive
in this linoleum eternity, diffident as a math problem

desperate to be solved. Right now I'm saying I'm coming back.
I'm saying Here, I'm saying Soon. Listen: I'm telling you

Wait for me.