April 22: Solitude
Martha
Solitude
Franny Choi
I hope no one comes to my party, I said out loud,
and meant it. In the email, I tried to sound too busy to care
like, I'm having too much sex to waste time
on proper punctuation, pretending it's not
the other way around.
Laura convinced me to jump
in the Narragansett Bay on my birthday—
February. There's no good word
for the opposite of fire,
the ice's sear and split, how it beckons the blood
toward what means to end it.
Oh god, I gasped over and over
as we stumbled through the snow back to the car,
me and my (burning) legs.
Now that's my kind of intimacy—
faceless, salty,
no wondering how my jokes are going over,
just running straight toward warmth
as my skin bursts open in shock.
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More Franny Choi:
+ Catastrophe Is Next to Godliness
+ The World Keeps Ending, and the World Goes On
+ Physical Therapy
+ Choi Jeong Min
Plunge into past poems:
2025: Meanwhile the Watermelon Seed, Idra Novey
2024: Kinder Than Man, Althea Davis
2023: Dearest,, Jean Valentine
2022: Birth, Louise Erdrich
2021: Cicada, Hosho McCreesh
2020: Future Memories, Mario Meléndez
2019: Little Girl, My Stringbean, My Lovely Woman, Anne Sexton
2018: First Night, D. Nurkse
2017: Einstein’s Happiest Moment, Richard M. Berlin
2016: Yiddishland, Erika Meitner
2015: July, Kazim Ali
2014: This Morning in a Morning Voice, Todd Boss
2013: Paralysis, Peter Boyle
2012: from Mayakovsky, Frank O’Hara
2011: Northern Pike, James Wright
2010: Humpbacks, Mary Oliver
2009: Alone, Jack Gilbert
2008: From Blossoms, Li-Young Lee
2007: For Grace, After A Party, Frank O’Hara
2006: Wild Geese, Mary Oliver
2005: A Brief for the Defense, Jack Gilbert