By Jiwon Choi
for Sam Rivers
On the edges of the thruway
threading New York
to New Jersey
a stone’s throw from the Whitney Houston
service area
find the real heart of America
stubborn icon
of America’s plains
rough grass growing
quietly
taking in
the landscape
of trucks crowding
all of daylight
rough grass remembering
the feet of five nations
Cayuga
Mohawk
Seneca
Oneida
Onondaga
in the wind is
the last question:
what is this word
they keep saying?
this word
free.
Rockaway Diaries 1989: Sinéad O’Connor, The Pope & Me
We’re watching Sinéad O’Connor rip up
The Pope in your Irish Catholic living room
a shrine of dark paneling and coffee-spill
carpeting
I look over at the portrait of JFK thinking
he might be weeping
but it’s your mother hyena wheezing
your father making no sound
and Jesus giving good stigmata
my family is vintage 1970’s Korean
miles to go before becoming American
but we have been to see Father Sun Myung Moon
at the big Midtown Hotel.
Los Angeles Makes No Sense, 1991
We are on the roof
of your four story building
near Chinatown
pretend sunbathing
because you had to take your car
to the mechanic
I’ve come to LA with Margie [your best friend]
the one warning you give us before leaving: don’t drink out of
the roommate’s mug because it's got his girlfriend’s picture on it
mostly cleavage [you’ve been licking its rim since we got here]
by the time you come back the neon god has taken over the sky
and we have nearly melted into the tar beach landscape
the next day you are still waiting to pick up your car
the mechanic will eventually diagnose complications with the carburetor
which controls the mix of air and fuel
in the internal combustion engine.
That sounds plausible, right? [yes, we should all be in control of our internal combustion]
Margie and I take a bus to see a college friend
who is living in West Hollywood
but when we get there she is getting ready to leave for a party
so we get back on the bus
to Chinatown.
I Am a Butterfly in Amber
When I cannot configure
Ahmad Jamal
to come through
Bluetooth
after grappling with the ghost
in the machine
for 30 minutes
my resistance is futile
but hey, these speakers are not
oracles of surround sound
just a genie in short circuits.
I Don’t Care About Being Glamorous But I Do Not Like That I Am Getting Shorter
The inscrutable scrutable
is that edges can be smooth
when at the doctor’s office
my height is measured
I am being catalogued
indexed for future reference
then finding out that I am missing .17 inches of myself
all these years, a confident five one
now I see
I was disappearing
incrementally evaporating over five decades
and none of my friends said anything
where did I go?
Is this the erasure that everyone is talking about?
The chatbot that lives inside my amygdala
says the best part about living in the world
is being dead
anyway, I know what you are going say
and I agree, I do have the right to be mediocre
and I don’t care about being glamorous
but I do not like that I am getting shorter.
I Have Just Begun
On the Bowery
in Store #291
the language of fishes
streams out through speakers
the cannibals from the midwest
busy picking out the right
antihistamine
miss it
the narcoleptic librarian
rubbing on this season’s green eye
shadow
dismisses it
I’m in the scented tissue aisle
and hear all the treble and hum
the tuba and strum
and once dormant gills perk up
from my pharynx
and once subdued scales glisten
and become deluxe
from my dermis
on the Bowery
I have just begun.
The Importance of Arts, Culture & The Creative Process
As a poet and artist, I believe I have a responsibility to connect with as many people as I can. If even one person has read my poetry and found something in there that helps them understand the world and themselves better, I am so grateful to have offered that insight. Just as my poets have given me sustenance to weather the heartbreak and woes of life, I know that this must also be part of the reason I write. As a co-editor at Hanging Loose Press, I want to help diversify and expand the landscape of poetry as much as I can. (Gerald Fleming suggested I submit work to your dynamic endeavor. Thanks for your consideration.)
What was the inspiration for your creative work?
The poems I am submitting come from the manuscritp for my fourth book of poems. The work involves much of my lived experience as a child of Korean immigrants and how we worked to navigate the new territory.
