mercy and water
Chiwan Choi
for the past year,
more than ever,
i’ve been trying to run away
from all things in my life,
wanting to create reasons
that can explain the way
my body has failed me.
years ago i ran all the way to new york,
ending up drunk on st. marks with a new tribe,
then leaving these strangers in bed
to walk in the rain
on 32nd and 3rd,
heading uptown then down
to that room where i left my bag
hanging on a metal chair,
surprised at the city,
how it keeps itself from getting lost
in the dawn breaking
between these two branches,
twisted and skinny,
pointing toward and away.
before that
was a house in the palisades
and another by the beach,
that one still haunted
by the owner’s dead love,
and dark west l.a. bars
with sticky red booths
and blind promises exchanged through touch.
it’s here again
and i can’t quite handle
the slow way in which we are dying,
my family propped up
by secrets and scar tissues,
a yearlong charade of doctors and tests
that ends with me sitting
on an examining table,
the man with the polish name
telling me that he doesn’t know
why bodies like mine stop.
“i can’t explain it,” he says.
and it leads to this:
walking out of another bar
into the night that is almost morning.
i put my hands in the pockets
of a $10 coat bought at a second hand store
on la brea,
unable to tell the time or the day,
how the past year has blurred
into an endless moment of regretting,
but the feet start to move faster without thought,
the memories in the body taking over,
mercy and water drops
on the curve of a side mirror—
the night and some path
toward that thing we call familiar,
a permanent forgiveness
like concrete and a tongue behind your ear—
wanting me to get there in time
to see her standing in front of the vanity,
rubbing scentless lotion
into her bare shoulders,
her speckled skin illuminated
by a small dim lamp
we found on the street.
Chiwan Choi is a writer, editor, teacher, and publisher. He has been a member of the Los Angeles Poets & Writers Collective since 1989. His poems and essays have appeared in numerous journals and magazines, including ONTHEBUS, Esquire, and circa. Chiwan’s first major collection of poetry, The Flood, was published by Tía Chucha Press in April, 2010.
He is a regular in the Los Angeles literary circuit, often invited as a featured poet at readings at The Hotel Cafe in Hollywood and the legendary Beyond Baroque in Venice. He also leads two writing workshops, one in downtown and one in Santa Monica.
After a two-year stint in New York, where he received an MFA in Dramatic Writing from the Tisch School at NYU, Chiwan returned to Los Angeles where he and his wife, Judeth Oden, launched a new publishing company to feature Los Angeles writers, Writ Large Press, in March 2008.
He lives in Downtown Los Angeles with his wife and their dog, Bella.
and Chiwan Choi was my editor and coach for my memoir, which wouldn't have been published had it not been for his expertise and encouragement. He is an uncomplicated teacher with a complicated wise mind. True genius.
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