Poet of the Month
Every month Moon Tide Press features a different poet to celebrate and bring readership to deserving, diverse voices.
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If you are interested in being featured as a Poet of the Month, or want to nominate a poet, please contact editor@moontidepress.com.
Griffin Peralta
November 2025
Griffin Peralta is a spoken word poet, public educator, and radio host based in Reno, NV. He hosts The Spoken Views Radio Hour on 97.7 FM KWNK, where he interviews and features touring poets and artists, and has shared the stage with renowned performers such as Buddy Wakefield, Derrick Brown, and Brandon Leake. As a member of the Spoken Views Poetry Collective, Griffin performs and emcees events throughout the Great Basin, including Reno’s Poetry Out Loud competition. A 5-time slam champion in Reno and Tahoe, his accolades include a 2024 Emerging Artist Spotlight from the Utah Arts Council and a 2018 Outstanding Educator Award. Peralta has recently been volunteering his time teaching poetry workshops at public libraries in Washoe County and at Upward Bound programs at the University of Nevada, Reno. Learn more at griffinspiration.net.
CALIFORNIA STATE ROUTE 139
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I was 500 miles
from the worst news I ever got.
The worst news I ever got was not 500 miles from me.
Instead, something kin to me
was growing in someone 500 miles away.
I was realizing how unlike me that person was.
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I drove,
yellow lines skidding by like old scars,
slower than my heartbeat,
which kept no distinct tempo behind my ribs,
crashing like a punk rock garage band,
while I rehearsed how to convince her against the sacred
when it hit me:
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A full grown elk,
rack of elegant antlers breaking in my passenger side,
neck snapping like my nerves
with a sound like ripping a heart from a tree,
hands slick with sap.
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I sat by my crumpled car for hours,
my tears and vomit mixing with my victim’s,
chest pressed against his chest
until I knew this murder was nothing like her not having my child.
​ARCANE ARITHMETIC
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We got caught in a necessary need to talk.
Like a long calculus equation which can only be solved
with tedious synthetic division, each of us
merely waiting for the right thing
to be said so we could walk away forever. I am Odin,
the Gallow’s King, I am lost
because I have sent away Thought and
Memory for fear of you. I cherish the day
before we met. You are the Statue of Liberty,
Many eyes have stretched to their nerve’s end to see you,
but you’ve lost sight of what you were erected of and for,
your copper heart is dull as moss, tarnished
by all the times you said “I love you,” and meant it.
It is important that we never meet.
Especially not at night.
Not even a hand shake at gunpoint.
There’s a special chemistry to losing touch.
Like a dark alchemy better left alone.
We are its most eager scholars,
writing good-byes to each other in the margins
of all the books we check out from congruent libraries.
But there will be no thesis written.
No lecture given on the secrets of the science of letting go.
For even to mouth each other’s names would be to press
our bleeding wounds together like the sky meets
the sea at the horizon.
Two similar but distinct blues.
Infinitely far apart, despite their seeming closeness.