#franny choi

Catastrophe is Next to Godliness, Franny Choi

Catastrophe is Next to Godliness, Franny Choi

(Content warning: racial slurs.)

Choi Jeong Min
Franny Choi

For my parents, Choi Inyeong & Nam Songeun

in the first grade i asked my mother permission
to go by frances at school. at seven years old,

i already knew the exhaustion of hearing my name
butchered by hammerhead tongues. already knew

to let my salty gook name drag behind me
in the sand, safely out of sight. in fourth grade

i wanted to be a writer & worried
about how to escape my surname — choi

is nothing if not korean, if not garlic breath,
if not seaweed & sesame & food stamps

during the lean years — could i go by f.j.c.? could i be
paper thin & raceless? dust jacket & coffee stain,

boneless rumor smoldering behind the curtain
& speaking through an ink-stained puppet?

my father ran through all his possible rechristenings — 
ian, isaac, ivan — and we laughed at each one,

knowing his accent would always give him away.
you can hear the pride in my mother’s voice

when she answers the phone this is grace, & it is
some kind of strange grace she’s spun herself,

some lightning made of chain mail. grace is not
her pseudonym, though everyone in my family is a poet.

these are the shields for the names we speak in the dark
to remember our darkness. savage death rites

we still practice in the new world. myths we whisper
to each other to keep warm. my korean name

is the star my mother cooks into the jjigae
to follow home when i am lost, which is always

in this gray country, this violent foster home
whose streets are paved with shame, this factory yard

riddled with bullies ready to steal your skin
& sell it back to your mother for profit,

land where they stuff our throats with soil
& accuse us of gluttony when we learn to swallow it.

i confess. i am greedy. i think i deserve to be seen
for what i am: a boundless, burning wick.

a minor chord. i confess: if someone has looked
at my crooked spine and called it elmwood,

i’ve accepted. if someone has loved me more
for my gook name, for my saint name,

for my good vocabulary & bad joints,
i’ve welcomed them into this house.

i’ve cooked them each a meal with a star singing
at the bottom of the bowl, a secret ingredient

to follow home when we are lost:
sunflower oil, blood sausage, a name

given by your dead grandfather who eventually
forgot everything he’d touched. i promise:

i’ll never stop stealing back what’s mine.
i promise: i won’t forget again.

==

Also by Franny Choi: To the Man Who Shouted “I Like Pork Fried Rice” at Me on the Street

For this moment: How to stop the dangerous rise in hatred targeted at Asian Americans  ||  Solidarity & Solutions: Asian American Women on Where to Go From Here  ||  Asian Americans Advancing Justice

Today in: 

2020: Earl, Louis Jenkins
2019:Kul, Fatimah Asghar
2018:My Life Was the Size of My Life, Jane Hirshfield
2017:I Would Ask You To Reconsider The Idea That Things Are As Bad As They’ve Ever Been, Hanif Abdurraqib
2016:Tired, Langston Hughes
2015:Democracy, Langston Hughes
2014:Postscript, Seamus Heaney
2013:The Ghost of Frank O’Hara, John Yohe
2012:All Objects Reveal Something About the Body, Catie Rosemurgy
2011:Prayer, Marie Howe
2010:The Talker, Chelsea Rathburn
2009:There Are Many Theories About What Happened, John Gallagher
2008:bon bon il est un pays, Samuel Beckett
2007:Root root root for the home team, Bob Hicok
2006:Fever 103°, Sylvia Plath
2005:King Lear Considers What He’s Wrought, Melissa Kirsch

Catastrophe Is Next to Godliness
Franny Choi

Lord, I confess I want the clarity of catastrophe but not the catastrophe.
Like everyone else, I want a storm I can dance in.
I want an excuse to change my life.

The day A. died, the sun was brighter than any sun.
I answered the phone, and a channel opened
between my stupid head and heaven, or what was left of it. The blankness
stared back; and I made sound after sound with my blood-wet gullet.
O unsayable—O tender and divine unsayable, I knew you then:
you line straight to the planet’s calamitous core; you moment moment moment;
you intimate abyss I called sister for a good reason.

When the Bad Thing happened, I saw every blade.
And every year I find out what they’ve done to us, I shed another skin.
I get closer to open air; true north.

Lord, if I say Bless the cold water you throw on my face,
does that make me a costume party. Am I greedy for comfort
if I ask you not to kill my friends; if I beg you to press
your heel against my throat—not enough to ruin me,
but just so—just so I can almost see your face—

==

Today in: 

2021: Weather, Claudia Rankine
2020:The Understudy, Bridget Lowe
2019:Against Dying, Kaveh Akbar
2018:Close Out Sale, Cristin O’Keefe Aptowicz
2017:Things That Have Changed Since You Died, Laura Kasischke
2016:Percy, Waiting for Ricky, Mary Oliver
2015:My Heart, Kim Addonizio
2014:My Skeleton, Jane Hirshfield
2013:Catch a Body, Oliver Bendorf
2012:No, Mark Doty
2011:from Narrative: Ali, Elizabeth Alexander
2010:Baseball Canto, Lawrence Ferlinghetti
2009:Nothing but winter in my cup, Alice George
2008:Poppies in October, Sylvia Plath
2007:I Imagine The Gods, Jack Gilbert
2006:An Offer Received In This Morning’s Mail, Amy Gerstler
2005:The Last Poem In The World, Hayden Carruth