Cut to Bloom

by Noah Arhm Choi

Overview

What does it take to unlearn the survival instinct of trauma? What does it take to choose our tools instead of wearing down the ones we've been handed? In Cut to Bloom, Noah Arhm Choi attempts to forge answers to these questions by navigating the hyphen, sometimes chasm, between the Asian and American identity, between queerness and the politics of belonging, between survival and the possibility of choice.

While talking back to the colonialism of strict poetic form, this book attempts to disrupt clear definitions and redefine the American identity as one that is constructed more by questions than answers. This book celebrates the self-made, rogue bouquet, the taking of what you were given and transforming it into something you could make a gift of, and examines what needs to be pruned in order to arrive at this transformation.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781949342215
Publisher:	Write Bloody Publishing
Publication date:	04/06/2020
Pages:	100
Product dimensions:	5.90(w) x 8.80(h) x 0.40(d)

About the Author

Arhm Choi Wild is a Kundiman fellow from Ann Arbor, Michigan, who holds an MFA in Poetry from Sarah Lawrence College. They were a finalist for the Jake Adam York Prize in 2019 and have been published in the anthology Daring to Repair by Wising Up Press and by Barrow Street, The Massachusetts Review, Split this Rock, and others. They have worked as an educator in New York City for the last six years, and have competed in poetry slams and performed across the country, including at Brave New Voices, the New York City Poetry Festival, the Nuyorican Poets Cafe, and the Bowery Poetry Club.

Table of Contents

Han

Inheritance 17

The Aria Thief: Part I 18

The Aria Thief: Part II 19

Ever the Pests 20

Fool Me Once 21

Vul/ner/a/ble: /veln(e)rebel/ 23

Fear Changes the Taste of Breast Milk Like an Animal's Violent Slaughter Spoils Its Meat 24

The Last Bruise 25

An Empty Home, a Playground 26

The Memory Keeper 28

Latchkey Coronation 30

Circle Talk 31

The Forgotten War 32

Legend 39

A Piece of the Heirloom 41

The Family Business: Iris Cleaners 42

13^th Anniversary 45

Rogue bouquet

Allegiance 51

What It Takes to Call a Place Your Own 54

Take What You Can 56

At What Cost 57

When I Visit My Father for the Last Time: Part I 59

When I Visit My Father for the Last Time: Part II 60

Undone 61

My Father Is Kneeling in the Dark 62

A Scavenger's Prayer 63

For the Sake of Light 64

Whatever It Is We Have Faith in 65

Story of My Name 66

Until I'm Ready 69

Compromise 71

Fall for Her 72

The Gift You Make of Patience 74

A Stubborn Kindness 75

What the Body Knows 76

Unsolicited Advice for the Queer Asian Girls Just Trying to Make It 77

The Tree to the Sky 78

Cut to Bloom 79

Memory Is a Gentle Blessing 81

Ode to Unlearning 82

Split to Shape 84

Glossary 89

Acknowledgments 93

Editorial Reviews

Noah Arhm Choi shows us that when English falls away, what lies behind, underneath, within it are unseen languages and unseen histories—complicated, painful, and beautiful.
- Patrick Rosal, author of Brooklyn Antediluvian, Boneshepards

Cut to Bloom is neither delicate nor tidy. This immense work both elucidates and complicates ethnic, generational, and gender violence, examining women who fight for their humanity against those who seek to silence—indeed, erase—them. - Jeanann Verlee, author of Prey, Said the Manic to the Muse

With keen eye, Wild carefully unpacks personal and political histories that the world would rather bury — “a story with no mouth,” as they beautifully put it. - Phil Kaye, author of Date & Time

From the Publisher