"Bon Chul Koo and the Hall of Fame" is a poem from Jason Koo's new book of poems, Man on Extremely Small Island.

BON CHUL KOO AND THE HALL OF FAME

Boston to Cleveland, ten hours with Dad in the car,
      and I’m thinking, How am I going to get through this,
remembering the last time we took a road trip,

      ten years ago, stadium-hopping through the Carolina League,
Class A ball, Kinston, Winston-Salem, Lynchburg
      and, of course, Durham, back in high school

when I was writing The Great American Novel
      about a starting pitcher on the Kinston Indians (which
began, “Ball four,” and went on for 147

      single-spaced pages) and told him I needed to do
some on-site research, getting the exact dimensions
      of fields, the colors of uniforms, the feel and flavor

of local crowds, as well as a few good player names
      (such as Wonderful Monds, outfielder for the Bulls),
and he surprisingly agreed to take me, only to get

      food poisoning on the second day of the trip
and spend the rest of it lying down in the backseat
      of the car or, if he had space, right there in the bleachers,

never saying, Let’s go home, but not happy either,
      sighing every few miles we’d drive in silence, as if to say,
I’m barely able to eat a nacho, going to all these stupid games

"Korean American Figure in the Midwest" is a poem from Jason Koo's new book of poems, Man on Extremely Small Island.

KOREAN AMERICAN FIGURE IN THE MIDWEST

And then, I entered my dark period. This,
though I was dating a girl named Faith. I kept
acting like a “downer.” My emails grew
very short. Questions came at me in rhymes:
“Are you mad?” “Are you sad?” I would
weigh these rhymes against my experience,
and they were teacups. Crestfallen,
why couldn’t anyone ask if I was crestfallen?
I watched a lot of television, much of it
good, including Sex and the City re-runs
and Bennifer specials on E!; but more bad,
especially the show I watched on Election Night
called Drowning in a Sea of Republican Red.