"I can never read all the books I want; I can never be all the people I want and live all the lives I want. I can never train myself in all the skills I want. And why do I want? I want to live and feel all the shades, tones and variations of mental and physical experience possible in my life. And I am horribly limited."

Sylvia Plath

Here

Here is a region of abundant details
Here is a region that is seldom used
Here is a region that continues living
Even when the other sections are removed

Put your hand out of your pocket
Wipe the sweat off of your brow
Now it feels like a bad connection
No more information now

As it passes through your neurons
Like a whisper in the dark
Raise your eyes to one who loves you
It is safe right where you are

Here is an area of great confusion
Here is a section that's extremely precise
And here is an area that needs attention
Here is a connection with the opposite side

Here is many sounds for your brain to comprehend
Here the sound, it's organized into things that make some sense
Here there is something we call hallucination
Is it the truth or merely a description?

David Byrne

"Maybe home is nothing but two arms holding you tight when you're at your worst."

Yara Bashraheel

Choi Jeong Min

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.

Franny Choi