Rozeal / Bubble Sisters Courtney Faye Taylor (bio) Keywords poetry, Courtney Faye Taylor, rozeal, ganguro, bubble sisters, k-pop, blackface Rozeal Bubble Sisters Untitled (after Kikugawa Eizan’s “Furyu nana komachi” [The Modern Seven Komashi]) 2007 Acrylic and paper on panel “Bubble Song” Album: Bubble Sisters Universal Music Korea 2003 Music Video Sounds like a docent says Bubble Sisters sing their single indium-style, so we sit electric on a on a yellow club stage. A three-minute birch church pew facing performance beneath god and a no title painting. a seesaw of light. I’m Untitled: portrait of a woman with blue in a funk over braids, nails, rollers, fros, view, bleach cornrows ending in a Sly Stone fro, Bantu knots. I’m mad at all four of their faces, ten Tabasco acrylics. cork-dye alive. She looks white to me, but her mug is slightly An act of blackface well-intended, vandalized with the color I am. giving the finger to Eurocentric beauty. A placard to the left names the concept— Minstrelsy setting out to prove that K-pop Ganguro: Japanese fashion. stars could be unconventional Girls wearing dark foundation, faux nails, with conviction, that K-pop stars could be tresses teased to the touch of fleece. unfair, unaware, unthin, unthem, but When the artist came across thoroughly talonted. Could be anti- ganguro, her opinion of it wore stunning and stun. Could starshine and be a deep side part: clay nieces of mine. On one side, she was satisfied Over here, we sho do go oops upside by this international Black fascination. Tho the head of any mocking fashion nations. on the other, every faux loc left in When fascination perms kitchens and coons fascination seemed lye-relaxed for bruises, when it makes scantrons of paper and flaccid, lil tassel in bags, the nigga delegation better ask the national rearview. why u feel a need to do that? Why the darkening of skin, Why that dank fit and drama she asked? Why skit? Why you feel do they feel the need to do the need to do us? We gotta do that? I had to do somethin’ quick something to figure out to flaunt what we threat. We what I thought. still unnerved and I’m still not sure I know unsure, picking at that scab over what I think. what we think. [End Page 482] Courtney Faye Taylor courtney faye taylor is a writer and visual artist. She is the author of Concentrate, forthcoming from Graywolf Press in November 2022. It is the winner of the Cave Canem Poetry Prize selected by Rachel Eliza Griffiths and was a finalist for the National Poetry Series. Courtney earned her BA from Agnes Scott College and her MFA from the University of Michigan Helen Zell Writers’ Program, where she received the Hopwood Prize in Poetry. She is also the winner of the 92Y Discovery Prize and an Academy of American Poets Prize. The recipient of residencies and fellowships from Cave Canem and the Charlotte Street Foundation, Courtney’s work can be found in Poetry Magazine, The Nation, Ploughshares, Best New Poets, The New Republic, and elsewhere. Copyright © 2022 The Massachusetts Review, Inc