Meandering home | by Kamiel Choi

Lured by a row of pastel macarons
I enter the store like a stray verse,
looking for comfort in its soothing hues
The soft face behind the counter smiles
when I smile, before I order a coffee to go
with my pink and orange macarons

20 April, 2018

Poetry

Wealth

A downtown apartment with security and a water cooler.
The furniture landscape emerging from a Persian rug.
Slow drip coffee. Long bookshelves with “art”.
A low noise dehumidifier.
A mahogany banister.
Gentility.
Heirlooms.
Silence.

19 April, 2018

Activism

Freelance bullshit jobs

I have been fascinated with anthropologist David Graeber’s concept of bullshit jobs for a while. I have written a bullshit job poem and a bullshit job rap. In this video, Graeber mentions an informal poll he conducted on Twitter to classify bullshit jobs. He arrives at five categories: Flunkies.. the people sitting around doing nothing, …

18 April, 2018

Poetry

My violin teacher

After twenty years I found my violin teacher
on Facebook. She remembered me, that was one of the joys of teaching, she wrote.

In the mean time, entire lives have started:
our children born, nine eleven, financial crisis. History has happened.

I want to ask her about my vibrato.

17 April, 2018

Poetry

Reading: Harbach 1944 by János Pilinszky

János Pilinszky (1921-1981) was an Hungarian poet who served in the Hungarian army in the Second World War. His work has been translated by Ted Hughes and János Csokits. Warning: I read a very dark and graphic poem:

16 April, 2018

Poetry

Oh great people, great healthy people

Oh great people, great healthy people with bosoms abulge and necks like reeds I want to like the fire of empathy that burns on your cheeks I want to write in the wake of your perfect gait I want to abide your teeth, carnivorous and straight I want to bury my envy at your feet, …

15 April, 2018

Uncategorized

Protecting the Rain Forest

I want to protect the rain forest. I want the rain forest to exist, so I can protect it. The good and the bad face us in cinematographic reality. I still want to protect the rain forest for love of the unknown. For birds I will never see. For their emerald eggs. For all I …

14 April, 2018

Poetry

A belief is all we have

A belief is all we have
to hold on to, some warmth
weaning us for darker times
when we thicket each other’s softest spots,
make our fingers lost and blow
weightless snow in each other’s faces
when we make chocolate gestures,
blanket soft talk in some rearrangement
of tired starlight

13 April, 2018

Essays

Morning Routine

I have the best morning routine. It’s an exceptional morning routine. It’s quick and new and ‘smart’. You do this morning routine, it will blow people out of the water. They’ll never see it coming! It’s the number one routine. The absolute best. There is a healthy brain guru named Jim Kwik who is peddling …

12 April, 2018

Poetry

I ride a subway train

I ride a subway train,
home-bound

There are empty seats;
I feel a cool breeze.

Two rhinoceroses walk by
I think: my wife and I.

11 April, 2018

Poetry

The Playground

The chubby boy points his toy gun at another boy His great grandfather fought in the war. This is not a guess. I am sure. His great grandmother was maybe a comfort lady to the invaders. But his gun is only made of plastic. He will be forgotten. I look at the boys. I see …

10 April, 2018

Poetry

Circle of Life

You too will get the e-mail from the hospital
You don’t know when, or which hospital, or
if the doctor has been born yet, but
it will come.

The good news is that you can already respond
to that e-mail, by giving birth
to some humor.

9 April, 2018

Poetry

Vernacular

coffee beans and machine guns change we can believe in. blackness is an ideal churches full of popcorn mumbling generals in tank tops nightliners piercing darkness a dead dog’s candy eye, the tightrope of history cigarette butts drowned in cold coffee orphans and Eurydice in ironed T-shirts earthworms tunneling underfoot abandoned swimming pools, and an …

8 April, 2018

Poetry

Reading: Love Poem for an Enemy by Richard Katrovas

Richard Katrovas (b. 1953) is a poet born in Norfolk, Virginia, who writes formalist poetry to compensate for the chaos of his childhood. He has been widely anthologized; I read a fun poem that I found today (I usually prepare these posts about 1-2 months in advance, so ‘ today’ in this case means March 7th) …

7 April, 2018

Poetry

Reading: After Us by Nikola Madzirov

Nikola Madzirov (b. 1973) is a Macedonian poet, probably the most famous one alive, who also writes essays and translations. I was looking for a younger Eastern European poet today and I found him.

6 April, 2018

Laughs

Silly Poem

“Said Hamlet to Ophelia,
I’ll draw a sketch of thee,
What kind of pencil shall I use?
2B or not 2B?” – Spike Milligan

5 April, 2018

Poetry

Reading: Lucky by Tony Hoagland

Tony Hoagland (1953 – 2018) was a witty and acerbic poet from North Carolina. Many awards. Some great and demonically intense poems. Here goes: Lucky If you are lucky in this life, you will get to help your enemy the way I got to help my mother when she was weakened past the point of …

4 April, 2018

Poetry

Meditation

Written for some poetry award last December, this clunker is what you get when you think too much while writing poetry on black coffee: now, here i do what i am supposed to do, i sit down and place a pillow underneath my behind, while thoughts billow in my mind in front of me there …

3 April, 2018

Poetry

Just now, I was intimidated

Just now, I was intimidated by an indestructible paper cup towering in front of me, a long shadow bulging from its rim. The straw hole in its stained lid vows to annihilate me, its cardboard jacket sinks frivolously in the surface of the table. Sovereignly, he does not move. I ask what do you want? …

Commercial poetry

Imagine

On the mountain

Macarons

Wealth

Freelance bullshit jobs

My violin teacher

Reading: Harbach 1944 by János Pilinszky

Oh great people, great healthy people

Protecting the Rain Forest

A belief is all we have

Morning Routine

I ride a subway train

The Playground

Circle of Life

Vernacular

Reading: Love Poem for an Enemy by Richard Katrovas

Reading: After Us by Nikola Madzirov

Silly Poem

Reading: Lucky by Tony Hoagland

Meditation

Just now, I was intimidated

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