The Last Time I Saw a 처녀귀신
Su Cho | Poetry
Fresh out of a first kiss
she drifted toward me
the doorframe shrinking
her red pepper lips catching
the dimmed light. I swear
this vision was just
a dream but here I am
thinking of my mother.
How she warned me
not to think of these maiden
ghosts because they were
the devil’s midnight brothels
but here I am—I am.
Su Cho is the author of The Symmetry of Fish (Penguin 2022) which won the 2021 National Poetry Series and was featured in the New York Times Book Review, NPR, and Roxane Gay’s Favorite Books. Her work has been anthologized in Best American Poetry, Best New Poets, and They Rise Like a Wave: An Anthology of Asian American Women Poets. Born in South Korea and raised in Indiana, she currently resides in South Carolina where she is an assistant professor at Clemson University. She is working on her second poetry book as well as an essay collection about ghosts and growing up in the Midwest.