this time the winter of 74, a year before we left.
it was always winter in that place i can&rsquo;t quite recall.
but i have spoken of this before,
of the time i wandered through the nameless streets
in seoul, paper money crumpled tight in my right hand,
the tips of the fingers of my left hand sliding on the surface
of walls and steel gates; trying not to lose contact
because it is this thing that touches my skin in daylight
that guides me home, this surface until the end
where i lost myself at the fallen snow.

the point is not that my mother found me,
as i cried in the alley behind the house,
but the details i have so far left out&mdash;that my father
was at work again, building a ramp up to the church
a cab ride away, where grandmother would later
plant rosebushes and name them after her grandsons,
my namesake the one second to the left&mdash;
my brother and i would run to them each sunday morning,
up the zig-zag of the concrete ramp that father would
eventually finish, to stand in front of them, comparing
the growth, how i waited for my name to grow taller
than the world as i pulled at the sleeve of mother&rsquo;s blouse.

nor is the point the cracks on the asphalt that appeared
after the snow to swallow the regrets of a city in january
as a voice abducted me around the bends.

this is not the lie i expected&mdash;
an attempt to put into words
the sparrow that kept returning each morning
to our balcony and our sunlight,
promising us a child, a daughter,
leaving a note with the name we were to give her.
how do i speak of these things?

i am now what remains of the details i choose to cherish
as i join my family once a month
and we do what we always have done to bare it,
tell each other new stories of ghosts
and shadows that we can&rsquo;t explain,
as mother entwines her short fingers
and tells us that one, that story,
about the ocean and the waves rising like cypresses
and the spaceship that has come for her since she was a child.

when it is my turn,
i tell them i have been staying up nights,
my wife asleep next to me with her arms above her head,
and i tell them about all the UFOs over argentina
until he smiles, his mouth smaller now over his dentures.
&ldquo;did i tell you about the chilean soldiers who witnessed
the spaceships before the war with argentina broke out?&rdquo; he asks.
&ldquo;yes, about the invisible dragons,&rdquo; i say.
he nods, happy that i have once again embraced
the unseen guides that lead me to rapture.

but see, even here, it&rsquo;s those things i leave out&mdash;
i don&rsquo;t even begin to tell them about that sunday
at the emergency room,
walking through the hallways,
my fingers touching the surface of things,
of tables and curtains, of walls and telephones,
to find her there, sitting on a metal bed,
somewhere between laughing and crying,
the sparrow having come and gone with what it had gifted,
my left hand on her thigh covered in worn denim,
my right one in a fist around a crumpled name.

abduction


at the emergency room,
 they kept using the word &lsquo;spontaneous&rsquo;
 and as i held her hand,
 trying to stop myself from shaking,
 i almost told her everything.
 i got as far as saying that i was to blame
 and staring at the floor.
 but she said
 i was being ridiculous,
 that these things couldn&rsquo;t be my fault,
 as my fingers gripped the steering wheel
 of our car that wouldn&rsquo;t move
 in the hospital garage,
 calling my mother to tell her
 and listening to her say nothing back.

 it began with her
 as the war broke out in korea,
 the abductions.
 she first saw the lights above her
 as she hid in a row board,
 lying still and quiet on her back,
 smiling at the way the colors in the sky moved,
 and days later, when her father tied her to a chair
 in the back room because he had to save his family
 from the communist invasion
 and one more girl was too much of a burden.
 he told her to be quiet
 but she wouldn&rsquo;t.
 she screamed and she cried there alone.
 they came, the ones from the lights in the sky,
 untying her
 and taking her over the ocean.

 dad says it started for him around the same time
 during the war that divided our homeland.
 his father, my grandpa, the one with the belly
 and the first one of us that made contact,
 how he tried to buy time for his family
 with a handshake deal while
 my father, his second son,
 carried his little sister
 across the border in the night
 to hide from the lights above.
 sometimes i hear him angry
 that we have been stuck in this life of running,
 of hiding in the jungle in paraguay
 as the invisible dragons circled
 the air above chile,
 of accepting our ability to sacrifice
 friends and lovers to save ourselves.

 it is strange.
 the first they told me this
 was on gramercy drive,
 the living room with the gray carpet
 of unit six, 950 gramercy drive,
 my parents sitting on the couch,
 how he leaned forward and tapped
 mindlessly on the coffee table with his paint
 caked fingers while my mother
 started adding the pink yarn to the blanket&mdash;
 standing in front of them
 with my arms straight down to my sides
 as he said,
 son, in this life, you can&rsquo;t have friends
 because you will have to lose them.

 he never warned me about what happens
 to our children,
 how sometimes they are taken
 before we can even know their skin,
 or maybe i just hoped it would be different for mine.

 it&rsquo;s been over two years now
 since she&rsquo;s been gone,
 taken on her journey from judy&rsquo;s womb.
 spontaneous.

 but last night,
 she was here.
 i rolled over to my left
 and in my half sleep
 saw her standing five feet away.
 she had grown,
 in a pale dress and boots,
 a jacket hugging tight around her shoulders.
 she looked to be around ten years old
 and in that moment i couldn&rsquo;t remember
 how long ago was that day
 that i can never escape.

 she smiled, standing in a beam of light,
 her hand lifting into the air,
 to say hello, to say stop, to say stay,
 and i bolted up,
 waking up screaming,
 hand reaching out across my wife&rsquo;s body,
 to the light that filtered in through the window,

 judy startled
 wrapping her arms around me through instinct
 as i began to wail at the fading light,
 telling her
 that i thought i heard
 our baby say
 goodbye.

her journey

on a bus
we head for the waterfalls

falling in and out of sleep
i look out the window into the dark night
and fall in love
with everything
i cannot see

i don&rsquo;t know what time it is
but it&rsquo;s late
and most everyone is asleep
or at least quiet

but my father stands up
from his seat at the very front
and turns to face the rest of us

he is a silhouette
a shadow that i can love
as his shadow arm raises
and his shadow finger points
toward
a place in the blackness
that we are supposed to remember

* 

my parents were gone
and i hid in the bush in front of our house
while the other boys lured all the stray dogs
up our driveway and into our back yard

when there were enough
of the dogs
of us
we chased them back out

and i jumped out of the bush
with a broomstick
and swung it at the dogs&rsquo; legs
tripping them
making them fly
tumble
break
down the steep driveway

there and watched
as the dogs lifted themselves up

whimpering
frightened
and limped and ran away

i was 9 and there was something that i wanted
and it was growing inside of me
and there was nothing i could do
to stop

*

my mother excitedly urges us
to join her on the rooftop

the moon, she says, the moon is huge tonight.
the biggest of the year.

i ask her
when she first embraced magic

and she reaches for her keys
and shakes her head at father

his jaws clenched tight
on the couch in front of the tv

what is magic when there is faith, she says

on the rooftop
she embraces the light
and offers me her god

and i say
no this needs to be magic

and i say
no this needs to be time

*

we touch down on US soil
we are taken to Santa Monica beach
I don&rsquo;t remember having seen the ocean before

there is the touch of sand at the bottom of my feet
I look up at the sun
and suddenly I can&rsquo;t remember my name.

a hand pulls at my arm
this is skin on my skin
he wants me to run against him

I tumble into the sand
he pulls away toward the finish line
and stops to tell me to keep running

but i don&rsquo;t rise into the air
and instead watch him cry
as he promises to make me whole

if 100, then 150

i make street lights appear on the ceiling 
until we can no longer be the same 

like the red of a house of bricks from childhood 
like the dead rising from the pavement in the rain 

* 

there is an image in my head
of me lying on my back
on the ground outside the world trade center 
it was 1989
and gary had told us to do that and look up
he said the building would look like it was going to fall on me 

i remember visualizing it as he spoke 
i remember lying there on the ground 

but i can&rsquo;t ever remember
what it is that i saw
what it was that took my breath away 

*

what color am i, father? 


* 

he looked up at me from the floor
at the bottom of the stairs
briefly
before rolling away so i couldn&rsquo;t see his face 

i stood at the top of the stairs 
hesitating
as i tried to hide all of my secrets 

he couldn&rsquo;t call to me
and i wouldn&rsquo;t run down to him 

because neither of us could admit 
the distance between us. 

* 

he stands over me
as i drown in my sweat 

he leans down and puts his hands on my legs 
holding my kneel
ike a fruit 

rise, he says,
 walk.

and there is silence 

broken
by a gasp that comes from 
deep within me 

what happens now 

take me to 100, he says. 
so i can get to 150.

if 100, then 150 (excerpt 2)

when the cold came
 I walked into the forest to die
 because winter was always the season 
I knew how to love 

there was once a tribe
 that was turned into a river
 of blood, the current soaking my feet
 until i chose to walk again hidden from the sun. 

it seems like so many years ago
 that my father told me
 one day i would learn to accept
 loneliness and that there was a place for me where fruits ripen 
on the branches that also hold up the sky 
in anger. 

there comes a day
 when your eyes can no longer
 stare at your brother at your sister
burying teeth into their own skin
 to find a chance to escape the curse 
of their bodies 

maybe we don't realize we have 
walked away from our lives until
 we are standing in snow falling
 like childhood and front yards and your 
first broken bone 

white was always the color of death. 

* 

in the air
 you can't breathe without 
shelter, without prison 
without another kind
 of living. 

i am a shadow 
over broken terrain 
on surface like skin 
that taught itself
 to heal too much. 

on the 13th of this month 
they will tell my father
 to split open his chest 
and watch death arriving 

and somewhere across 
this country i will
 catch a moment
 where a yellow flower 
braces itself from winter 
by opening. 

* 

i held my arms out in front of me
 (the way we practiced in elementary school
 before i could even learn this language)
 my hands on the shoulders of the kid ahead of me 
measuring the distance to keep from each other
 arm length, the impossible distance of the air in reaching 

the snow then fell remaking my skin
 into a winter river a month from thaw
 from exposing the heart that has never stopped murmuring 
time long ago untracked until we can&rsquo;t know
 whether it&rsquo;s the fire or the drowning that will greet us 

when i was a child father would point at every person 
in the room and tell me to learn to identify the ones 
that were there to kill me, but now he is small
 and full of bread and is only afraid 
that i&rsquo;ll speak too much 

this is the forest
 that much i know
 because my bones remember 
how to be scared among the trees 

because remember
 they gave the history of our skin to jesus
 so we would choose to erase our own names 

selah

this is where i have come to pretend
 these bare branches are shadows of my mother
 shuffling across the front yard, the dog close by 
following, her gloved hands tending to the rose bushes 
that she&rsquo;d hoped would bloom something more than grief 

* 

this forest will be the room 
with the white walls
 in which i could break
 like daylight 
like silence 
like promise 

* 

is it here, i ask the forest,
 where everything changes 
where the light touches my heart 
in the cold night shifting 

and she says, open your mouth 
to what you know of as god 
there are so many voices 
within you that want 
to be saved.

MY NAME IS WOLF

i drop the sesame oil stained chopsticks
 to use my hand, half hidden in a black brace,
 to stop them
 from dying
 but my father turns his face to mom
 his mouth full of spinach
 and tells her
 that she is again wrong

*

she sent me a photo from connecticut
 of a tumbler full of ice and whiskey

this is not a shot glass, she writes
 to explain how her night is going

there are four days in the palm of her hands
 and we are both wishing that they will not rot

i am tired, she says

i am tired too, i say

*

we are looking for a place for fire
 but all we find are the bones
 we used to frame that life we&rsquo;d wanted:

house
 baby
 influence

we are only aware it&rsquo;s winter
 because we are standing in the middle of it
 an unlit match between us

so many things that we can&rsquo;t say like

i am hurting

*

the dog is asleep next to my bed
 i tore the sheet in my sleep last night
 outside the neighbors are drinking
 beer, i think, or that&rsquo;s what they said

i am staring at my toes above and past the horizon
 of this computer screen
 each day i worry that i will lose my legs

i don&rsquo;t know what i&rsquo;m supposed to do right now
 there is loneliness, i think, but whatever

i yelled at my father tonight over dinner
 because he is getting old and i don&rsquo;t know what to do
 so i do what he&rsquo;s taught me over the years
 yell at people, at things, until something happens

now it&rsquo;s past 8pm
 tomorrow is friday
 in a little bit it will be June and we&rsquo;ll all wonder
 where the year has gone

i want to remember something important
 but all i can think of is riding in george&rsquo;s camaro
 top down
 somewhere in torrance

it was around 1am
 there was nowhere we were trying to get to

we were just waiting
 for our skin
 to burn.

Chiwan Choi

abduction

her journey

if 100, then 150

if 100, then 150 (excerpt 2)

MY NAME IS WOLF

we are only aware it’s winter

Chiwan Choi

Apocalypse, Now

Aliens

Los Angeles Poets

abduction

her journey

if 100, then 150

if 100, then 150 (excerpt 2)

MY NAME IS WOLF

we are only aware it’s winter