#media/book of#poetry from Franny Choi
Acknowledgements
https://pinwheeljournal.com/poets/franny-choi/
as a compliment. Man who snaps a photo, presses my neck to print the image, it’s him wearing my face, as a compliment- thank you. Thank you, woman clutching a scrap of my hair, saying fiend friend friend until my lips rust in place. (The brown dust fals and I lick it up, embarrassed.) When the woman scrapes a sample of my skin into her petri dish, it’s too late to stop smiling. Butch who corrects my hip at the crosswalk to convince me l’m no mollusk, thank you. I claim you I claim you, someone laughs and plants his nipple on my tongue like a flag, and I’m still lucky to be invited. An audience of smiles invites me, one mouthful at a time, a hundred tiny reverse T-shirt guns, everyone’s a winner. It’s a miracle, I think. I thought I was just one fish but look, everyone’s got a full plate. All hail the fish king as they reach to scoop out more, I’m so grateful. Even the walls are chewing. There should be enough teeth to go around but I’m still smiling, smiling until my gums crack, until I’m a photograph. Gosh. I’m licking all the doorframes. I’m so grateful to be
The Price of Rain
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/648709
Property’s still theft. I let my wet skin slip through the drainpipe. My mother says love, in our family, means sacrifice. I thought, if I lay my legs on the altar, I thought something would come back to me. Mine, mine. I offered it, being promised rain. Being told my wet was in the common domain. I whispered, Our body, our legs, our compost heap. I gave freely. I gave it for free, thinking that made me wingèd -stork delivering herself to herself. Look how free 1 am. Dowager Slut. Queen Regent. Turns out, there are no synonyms for King. My lord, my darling, my darkening sky. You can’t buy a thunderstorm. Nor should you bring one back from the dead. But I threw open the gates. I invited them in. I said, Help yourselves. Then watched as they went room to room, taking, emptying the shelves, sucking marrow from the bones, and overhead, the sky filled with rain.