Open Wide
small mouth with too many teeth the dentist making small talk
over the buzzing eight extracted before age ten easier each time
shot of novacaine came
I closed my eyes against overhead lights to learn that pain might be
rewarded: a free frosty at Wendy’s a pink plastic treasure chest the width
of a hard candy
with my baby teeth inside
Asian
fake lashes and a contoured nose,
she orders tape to make double
consciousness looks back,
hair dyed blonde—
a lotus blossom,
she’s meant to subvert
with her eyes colored green
Baby
once a girl
her eyelids, shut—
a face—unrecognizable
she becomes
model minority,
agreeable worker, reticent
eager to please
Girl
daughter duty slips from grip—
once opened, a new
script in her
whatever you want:
dragon lady
—that myth
your fantasy.
Stephanie Choi’s poems appear in Bellevue Literary Review, New Ohio Review, PANK, Blackbird, Electric Literature, and elsewhere. She is a graduate of the University of Arizona and the University of Utah. She is currently the poet-in-residence at Sewanee: The University of the South. Her debut collection, The Lengest Neoi, was selected by Brenda Shaughnessy for the 2023 Iowa Poetry Prize and will be published by the University of Iowa Press in 2024. Find her at xostephchoi.com.
“Open Wide” is used with permission from the University of Iowa Press © Stephanie Choi 2024. It appears in The Lengest Neoi (University of Iowa Press, 2024).