National Poetry Month Day 8: Noah Arhm Choi

By

 

 

 

 

The Man in the Moon

No light on the one way street sign
my father, whose name is, was, Moon, claims

drives steady into the rod of traffic
hands slick from the beer bottle sweating
between his knees. He walks away

without even a bruised knee
enough insurance money for a flight to Vienna,
my mom, fresh robbed by the last man she didn’t want

to have to trust & no family to worry how swiftly
she turns toward the Moon
so proud of the money in his pocket

casually paying for her
playing the guitar on the floor
a cigarette in his mouth. How charming

this Moon can be. How romantic
his gestures, the thin work he makes
of the ocean, sweet talking like chocolate
opened in the heat.

 

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Author photo by Sarah Phillips

Arhm Choi Wild is the author of CUT TO BLOOM, the winner of the 2019 Write Bloody Prize. Arhm received a MFA in Poetry from Sarah Lawrence College and their work appears or is forthcoming in Barrow Street, Blackbird, The Massachusetts Review, Pleiades, Split this Rock, and others. They were shortlisted for the Poetry International Prize and received the Ellen Conroy Kennedy Poetry Prize, alongside fellowships from Kundiman, the Sewanee Writers’ Conference, and the Martha’s Vineyard Institute of Creative Writing. They work as the Director of the Progressive Teaching Institute and Diversity Coordinator at a school in New York City. For more information, visit arhmchoiwild.com. More from this author →