The Wardrobe’s Best Dressed: Omma, Sea of Joy and Other Astrological Signs by Bo Schwabacher

Wardrobe Best Dressed 
This selection, chosen by Guest Curator Alaina Hanchey, is from Omma, Sea of Joy and Other Astrological Signs by Bo Schwabacher, released by Tinderbox Editions in 2021.

An Adopted Korean Girl’s
New Year’s Wish for her Birth Mother

What else does
an orphan-

girl
have?

Whomever
I’m with, I

please. Brave
omma,

we’re outcasts.
An ajumma

is

selling cigarettes
next to the

place
we
were last

together. A ghost is
blessing my

cakes.
I’m

steaming my
misshapen songpyeon (송편)

over pine
needles.

This earthy, real

grief
was
our

beginning. As
an animal,

I need to be held. Beauty
is a feeling.

Bo Schwabacher is a South Korean adoptee. Born in South Korea, she was adopted at three months old and grew up in Illinois. Her poems have appeared in Cha, Radar, Tupelo Quarterly, Zone 3, and others. Omma, Sea of Joy and Other Astrological Signs, published by Tinderbox Editions, is her debut collection of poems. 

Alaina Hanchey, known as Harley to both friends and foes, believes rhetoric is intensely important and the way we speak can change the world. That belief was shared by her best friend, Quinn Arielle Kerlin, who inspired her to volunteer and immerse herself in those words that matter, and the connections that matter.

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