02-17-2024
Chiwan Choi
THE RIFT
there was a horse
on the unpaved road
and a man and a carriage
full of watermelons
he called for us all of us—
wheels clacking as he rode
his horse drawn carriage
calling for us
there was a boy
on a red brick wall
his feet dangling high in the air
above the sidewalk
he watched this strange world—
slapping his knees
with his small hands
and asked the man to stay
more than four decades later
the boy was now a man or
that thing closer to death
asking the boy to stay
on the wall
dangling feet
calling for him
to jump
to jump into his arms
to jump into his future
to jump into the confusion to come
calling for him
to jump
to jump into terror
to jump into his life
calling for me
calling for me
calling for me
to find my way
back
home
KITE
give me your hand
i will recognize it by its rhymes
a fraction of what it was
when i thought it could hold up
the earth and the moon
and everything and the sun
give me your hand
i still recognize it by its regrets
let your skin
slip away from you
and i will build a roof
and walls around
your bones
give me your hand
i will call it home
and imagine my own family
a daughter pointing at a photo of you
holding me in your right arm
give me your hand
hold it still like the mountain
when we’d go visit grandpa
and i held out my hand
until the dragonfly
landed on my outstretched finger
you showed me
how to tie the string to its tail
and watched it flap its wings
and hover in front of me
a kite, i said
and held the string
and ran around grandpa’s grave
as you shook your head
your lips moving to mutter
a secret to god
give me your hand
i want to hold you
like this
in front of me
fly
dad
fly
FLIGHT
the temperature
won’t go down at all
i have taken enough drugs
to imagine a less confusing life
it involves a lot of forgetting
but that part started long ago
we can’t leave home without damage
your absence alters the landscape
there’s a man next to me
who toasts with an empty cup
what can he possibly know
about my visions of burning castles
of hecate
and her wolves
what could he really know
about the storms trapped in my knees
voices are smoke on the verge of flight
i can almost taste your name in it
could i convince you to pause your travel
and rest on the shiver of my forearm
because i am high and i am tree and i am
wondering if there’s a point in my breaking
where the dying
sounds like living
-from Sky Songs, selected by PoemoftheWeek.com Spring 2025 Guest Editor, Lee Herrick
I am a poet, writer and publisher, author of four full length books of poetry—The Flood (Tia Chucha Press, 2010), and the Daughter Trilogy: Abductions (Writ Large Press, 2012), and The Yellow House (CCM, 2017) & my name is wolf (2022) – and multiple poetry chapbooks, including Time Out of Space and lo/fidelity lovesongs.
I wrote, presented, and destroyed the novel Ghostmaker throughout the course of 2015, as part of my ongoing examination on the meaning of a book, with the audience tasked in remembering and recreating a work that has disappeared and in turn creating a new version of a book that never really existed.
I have published my poetry, fiction and essays in numerous journals and magazines, including The New York Times Magazine, ONTHEBUS, Poem-A-Day, Entropy, cream city review, Mud City Journal, chaparral, Twelfth House, Spiral Orb, Zocalo Public Square, Esquire, Maura Magazine, and the anthologies Resist Much/Obey Little and ATTN. I have been the subject of features on KCET, LA Weekly, Cosmonaut Magazine and OTHRPPL. I was even a librettist for the opera Songs and Dances of Imaginary Lands, produced by Overtone Industries!
I am a partner at Writ Large Press and the Editor at Cultural Daily.
Oh. I also host the paranormal podcast with a literary twist, Are You There, Ghost? It’s Me, Chiwan.
