Jiwon Choi

AUTHENTIC EXPERIENCE 

who are these 
women on screens
streaming 
in from 
places like galilee 
southern rhode island
and montauk
new york island
claiming

we love spicy food
!

there they go
demo-ing all the
accultur-
a-tion 
the screen
can accom-
mo-date
eating authentic 
experience 
as they
insist 
on 
apply-
ing 

go-chew-jang

go-shoe-wang

go-down-dung

go-down-moses

on
everything but the
kitchen 
sin-
k

beware the knee jerk-
ing
towards the brow
banging 
into dis-orient-
a-tion 

when ina
gar-
ten said
on her show
you can a-
void 
making your spareribs 
too chinese-y
by add-
ing cav-
iar
but-
ter 
or 
lou-
is vuit-
ton 

was she just trying to make it
french? 

BUT NOTHING CAME OF IT

lake george or bust
from forty second street
port authority
takes over five hours
imagine four 
twenty-somethings
on a bus
labor day, early nineties 
when smart phones 
were the jetpacks 
we weren’t waiting for
all those hours on the bus
what did we do? 
one fell asleep 
talking to her window face
the second opined  
to the third why her un amore 
would not reciprocate
though she knew why:  
she would have to convert 
(which she did years later)

me?  i was probably reading 
the holy trinity:
glück, sexton, plath

all of us winding up 
in one room
at a howard johnson’s
(or was it the quality inn?)
could have made for 
a swinging sorority sitcom
but nothing came of it
we opted to say hi to frankenstein
at the wax museum
then get shitfaced at
the marriott. 

---

Jiwon Choi is a poet, preschool teacher, and urban gardener.  She is the author of three poetry collections. Her most recent book, A Temporary Dwelling, was published by Spuyten Duyvil.  She started her Brooklyn community garden’s first poetry reading series, Poets Read in the Garden, to support local writers. She is an editor at Hanging Loose Press.  You can find out more about her at iusedtobekorean.com.