Quest Love calls Ezra Edelman’s
nine hour sequence
of the Beautiful One
looking quiet
punching out muses
speaking in koans
while embracing lace
“a cultural service”
for Black men
We’re in junior high and our parents are too busy to
notice we’ve cut school to see a movie at the Olympia
movie theater on the corner of 107th Street. Ten letters.[1]
Diaz says we pleasure to hurt
leaving marks the size
of stones
Shangri-La of the Minnesota cornfields. Tour tickets You are my island east In interviews, the father No wildflowers take He grew up tragically alone Do you want him or do you want me but ongoing battles with the Estate I never meant to cause you any sorrow[*] will our bodies Jiwon Choi is a poet, preschool teacher, and urban gardener. She is the author of three poetry collections. Her most recent book, A Temporary Dwelling, was published by Spuyten Duyvil in 2024. She started her Brooklyn community garden’s first poetry reading series, Poets Read in the Garden, to support local writers during the early COVID years. She is an editor at Hanging Loose Press. More: iusedtobekorean.com. Check out HFR’s book catalog, publicity list, submission manager, and buy merch from our Spring store. Follow us on Instagram and YouTube. Disclosure: HFR is an affiliate of Bookshop.org and we will earn a commission if you click through and make a purchase. Sales from Bookshop.org help support independent bookstores and small presses. Footnotes [1]Purple Rain↥ [2]Paisley Park↥ [3]Prince↥ [*]Quotes from the article “The Prince We Never Knew” by Sasha Weiss↥ [+]excerpted from “Postcolonial Love Poem” by Natalie Diaz↥
available for $75. Eleven letters.[2]
I confess!
“I am your culebra”
of Puerto Rico?
John Nelson claims the son’s
successes
mother Mattie Shaw kicks her child out
at twelve
by fourteen he was sleeping on friends’ couches
I am the serpent
you found
in a place where
“I’m not a woman
I’m not a man
I am something that you’ll never understand.”
Six letters.[3]
twenty years to bloom[+]
craving family, making then breaking
families
embodiment of multiple paradoxes
and complicated personas
57 years of fighting to be seen
cuz I want you
means we probably won’t ever get to
see this film
ever bloom?
we want to believe in rain
so we wait
Heavy Feather Review 