It did occur to me, yes,that babyhood is a good timeto demand boundless lovenot because you are helplessbut because you are harmless.This was at Duval and 38thright after someone honked at mebecause the light was greenand had been for some time.I was on my bike, trying to grow back into somethingI had grown out of, like a hermit crab rewound.Did you know those little guys get in a line according to size so they canmove into a shell that fits in quick succession and minimize the time theyare exposed and homeless? I watched a video of this narrated by DavidAttenborough—they form an orderly queue for the exchange. Remarkable.But in this videoone latecomermuscles his way inand steals the last crab’s shell.Remarkable.I mean the hate I feel.Do you know what color the light has beenin my life, generally?You know already that I did notreally turn around and say thisto the teenager in the car.You do not need to be told how little happened.
In My Natural Habitat
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From Salvage (University of Wisconsin Press, 2025) by Hedgie Choi, originally published in Poetry.
Paul Miller
Hedgie Choi is the translator of Pillar of Books by Moon Bo Young and the cotranslator of Hysteria by Kim Yideum, which won the Lucien Stryk Asian Translation Prize and the National Translation Award. Her poetry can be found in Poetry, Catapult, West Branch, and elsewhere. Her fiction can be found in NOON, American Short Fiction, The Hopkins Review, and elsewhere.
“Meet Hedgie Choi, in Salvage, lurking like someone with blue hair, using droll commentary and humor to confront poetry’s great subjects—love, death, and mystery: ‘I am afraid of mystery / but by Mystery I was made / to be afraid.’ These poems thrill with deceptive simplicity, subversion, and candor, jolted by biting critiques of culture, in a tone as accessible as it is original. She writes, for example, with a wink and a nod, ‘I’m too afraid of pain to eat Chinese food / under five dollars. I’m going to live forever.’ I hope she does.”
—Jane Miller
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