It’s Only a Movie

Any 90s movie I watch now I can’t finish. Except
maybe Speed for Keanu’s baby face. Clueless was as cringe
as you’d expect. Mrs. Doubtfire I start and stop.
To be in his kids’ life Daniel makes a lie
of a truth, a guitar of a broom. I love
the movie cause it’s funny. Cause the dad wants
his children. Cause it’s bootlegged and playing
at all times of the night, in a room a parent
hasn’t walked in days. It’s just
a movie about a man who remains
a man though dresses as a woman, flipping
between M and F like pancakes,
lids clapping his boobs with their own heat
like even what you want can make you burn.
He flips to F with a delicate tone, lotion, a face
dripping cream even with company over,
then to M for court to demand
another chance, back to F to cup a cheek,
be soft and still not too soft to be loved,
M to touch his chest in public, F to bare
the hair stuck in the bra until he is in a stall
or safely home, M to sit alone and not be called plain
or lonely. Daniel ends the movie as Daniel but also
Mrs. Doubtfire, like we can have one foot
on one side without the other, caffeinated
but tired, hiding yet smiling, prayed away or gay for play
or right kept from left, like a truth
can be a lie and a lie can be true, a guitar
can be a broom, a wish can make anything
come true, like I don’t like this movie, I need
this movie, though instead of need
I will say funny, instead of want, say comedy,
say isn’t this the dad anyone would want to be?

Clever Machine

You fell in love with Channing Tatum and thought it was your own idea, Step Up on repeat,
your pants low as if that would give you abs to rock or girls to kiss, skipping school to
practice Pony in the garage. Turns out, you wanted to be him cause every book at school was
white. The herons outside, white. Your love, white, like every teacher you had until you were
nineteen, except back then we called it normal or American or better than the shape you
made with your two hands so you learned to fold a boat, a swan, never called it origami, just
said neat or dope, since white supremacy steals words as if they were rootless, says look here
instead at all they are taking from you, from the dart board of chances you have, keep your arrows
to yourself, do not share, such a needy lover, so enmeshed you don’t even know you are
loving it and buying its favorite biscuits, rushing to respond in twenty-four hours, say circle
back and close the loop, the noose tightening on your neck, you mean necklace, so beautiful,
how it says what about my turn when it steals turns like a literal job, how it loves to hear itself
speak, song you can’t get out of your head, been bobbing to it for days, a five year old saying
they wish they have blue eyes, crossing out their brown ones, their mother buying contacts
for their sixteenth birthday saying my most beautiful girl in the world, this is for you, I got it just for
you, this all you can eat buffet, convincing you are bottomless, that what your body knows of
enough is just you being weak, lazy, unable to take advantage of all that America has given
you, give it over, give in, stuff yourself so full you can’t take even one more bite

Love in Time of Disaster

surely, it is madness to love someone
to watch the water creep up the walls of their bank, their cars
and have no way to reach them. to say absurd things like i will do whatever
you need and always and i’m sorry, as if my chest is soundproof. cheap. innocent.

who am i to think i’m not marked by what i’ve lost—
a father shaped hole looking for a father shaped man.
grandparents in every direction.
a wedding ring. my mother’s pens. my favorite hat.

i know what i’ve lost has not come to find me back.
i know that filling one cup doesn’t mean you can fill the other.
i know hurt only gets healed by love if you’re willing
to get hurt again.

who am i to think i am worthy of grief.
i’m not in asheville, having left for a state that doesn’t ask
if i’m being asian for halloween.
i’m not close enough to bring my friends water or bail out their basement
or share the propane or bring out the beans or look for Josh or the dog
or offer them a place to come over.
who am i to think that wanting to be someone they can count on
will make me someone they count on.

the last peach of the summer floats down the street.
an empty leash and collar. every corner now a circle.
mud that does not think anything
about the years spent or wishes wished,
water that doesn’t care about the bargains we have made
against our own future.

who am i to think i have something to lose when all i have left
of that home is the fence post of memory bent to time.
my first love. first tattoo. first time i changed someone’s mind
and didn’t become a blur of shame.

love makes me want to be the smallest pill to swallow,
the easiest appointment to book or chip to cash in, as if
i’m not marked by what i have lost—my first language, my cool,
my chance to pretend it’s not madness to wish
for what i want, what i’ve promised to not lose again.

*

Noah Arhm Choi is the author of Cut to Bloom, winner of the 2019 Jack McCarthy Prize. The 2026 Lambda Literary Poet-In-Residence and Valentines Editor for Honey Literary, they received an MFA from Sarah Lawrence, and their work appears in The Adroit Journal, Split this Rock, The Rumpus, Foglifter, and elsewhere. Noah was shortlisted for the Poetry International Prize and received the Ellen Conroy Kennedy Poetry Prize, alongside fellowships from Kundiman, the Sewanee Writers’ Conference, and the Adirondack Center for Writing. They serve on the Kundiman Board of Trustees and currently work at NYU Metro Center for Research on Equity and the Transformation of Schools. A K-12 educator of fifteen years, they work to embolden the intersection of education, activism, and the arts.