Essays    Reportage    Marginalia    Interviews    Poetry    Fiction    Videos    Everything   
In This I Find

I’m starting to believe in small magics like / astrology and sudden rain

By Sydney Jin Choi, Aarthi Haig
Aarthi Haig, "Star Fall"
Poetry | Korean poetry, MAGIC: A Folio, poetry
November 30, 2020
In This I Find I’m starting to believe in small magics like Halmuni’s prophetic dreams astrology and sudden rain when I forget my umbrella my father is in bed with the flu Halmuni calls from abroad when she learns of illness but 아빠는 괜찮아요 Baba’s okay 나는 I’m drenched when I arrive home I was born to be like a pig and he’s my father a rabbit I don’t know the lunar calendar how to reconcile the story of animals without speech Halmuni hands me a paper basket I use two hands to receive respectfully I speak English to fight in America 미안 해요 I apologize for my language
.

Sydney Jin Choi was born and raised in the San Francisco Bay Area. She holds BA’s in English and Italian from the University of California, Davis and an MFA in Creative Writing from Rutgers University-Newark. You can find her at sydneyjinchoi.com.

Aarthi Haig is a South Asian American artist based in Fairfax, VA (just outside Washington, DC). She grew up in rural Pennsylvania and has lived in Paris, New York City, and Philadelphia. In addition to her budding art career, Aarthi is a civil rights lawyer and proud single mother who relishes making art with her two children (ages 8 and 5). Like their mother’s art, they are bold, unconventional, and vibrant. Find her at www.artisticsurvivor.com.

Tags: , ,
Non-Invasive
Instinctively, one / wants to be the native plant in its ancestral loam, / one wants a resistance to the sun, to shun full rainfall / for a flash of morning dew, or at very least, grow / some throwaway limbs.
Ghazal for Chosen Sisters
I too wander the temple of knowing.
Face | Off
Pipedream: / I wondered what it would be like to strip away / slit eyes—sick of assimilation; the debilitating / task of tireless reinvention.