July 2015

Franny Choi.

July 26, 2015August 21, 2015 Miss Capital ALeave a comment

For so long has Button Poetry been my rude but much-needed awakening from my monotonous trance I call life. If someone were to challenge me to change a life in 3 minutes, I would slap down Button Poetry’s Youtube address so hard on the table my hands would be permanently stained pink. My most recent obsession is Button Poetry Goddess Franny Choi.

A Korean American writer, performer, teacher, Brown graduate, LEGEND, Franny Choi is one of the most original poets I have ever met. Every word in her poem is delivered with a punch to the soul; I am most amazed by her authentic, heavy-weighted words that drip with raw passion, a thirst to express her digested musings and fragments of experience. If she were just any other poet, the praises would stop there. But Franny not only possesses talent in creating ideas but also delivering them. Her metaphors are so intricate and just so relatable you feel like they are YOUR words too. Once they crawl into your ears, there is no extracting them out. I secretly suspect that they decompose there until the creature in your skull absorbs them. Then when the time is right for you to shine, the words become fuel for your own expression.

My personal favorite poem by Franny is “Pork Fried Rice.”

“You want me lunch special. Thank you,come again!

You want me here. I am greasy for you.

I slick my hair with MSG every morning. I am bad for you.”

Performed at NYC’s Intangible Slam in 2012, the poem follows the injection of thorns into the skins of women by an insensitive patriarchal facet of society. It shines light on the ways women are diminished and crumpled into objects of mockery and obscenity. It makes you nauseous and raises a billion questions in your head about the indoctrination of vulnerability undergone by women all with 3 words: a classic Chinese take out order. Talk about powerful!

If you decide to do yourself a favor and check her out, the links are all below darlings! You can purchase her book of poems “Floating Brilliant Gone” and read her other poems on her website.

Youtube:
Pork Fried Rice: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GS56hTj4XT4
POP!goesKOREA!: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IjX03sOiLE0
Ring around the Rosie: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sVI3NQSWoLA
All Look Same: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y1-oP3oez_k
Website: http://frannychoi.com/

Sincerely,

Previous Adventures

July 25, 2015August 10, 2015 Miss Capital ALeave a comment

A tribute to my last home.

July 25, 2015July 26, 2015 Miss Capital ALeave a comment

We all have our Square Ones; mine… was Shanghai. Although for the longest time, my stubborn alternate ego brainwashed me into thinking that Singapore would forever be my only home (my spiritual half; my soul-city because after all everything familiar was there, it was just a stranger’s motto I would recite countless times so I would actually feel secure. Because I would then know who I was- a hard core Singaporean who was so homesick sometimes she had to stand in her shower just a little longer than usual. But that wasn’t entirely true.

The truth was that though my shy side sometimes got the better of me, my confident, innately curious, exotic side really wanted out. It wanted to burst out of me and transform me into this admirable stranger and it did in Shanghai. A fish out of water, a bilingual “Americanized” Singaporean in the streets stood out more sorely than I had expected.

My leverage was my position as a foreigner because I watched more closely than anyone else the sunburnt locals and their dirt-coated fruit carts hiccupping beside the pavement speckled with spit and the children outside local rice stalls crouching beside the cute stray cats. Nevermind the giant shopping malls and screaming skyscrapers the vibrant streets were so much more exciting. For once, I pushed away my oblivion because I wanted to observe and remember.

That was when my hands began to speak more than my lips.