Choi Jeong Min

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.