In poems born of intense loneliness, grief, anger, and uncertainty at a convergence of apocalypses: a raging pandemic, a worsening climate crisis, and numerous global uprisings, Ally Ang's Let the Moon Wobble asks and seeks to answer the question: What makes the end of the world worth surviving?
Let the Moon Wobble considers multiple speakers' journeys through the COVID-19 pandemic, the climate crisis, and the rise of fascism. With humor, lyricism, and endearing absurdity, Ang uses varied forms and poetic traditions to process feelings of helplessness and uncertainty. These poems ache for connection and lineage in a time of unrelenting isolation, plumbing the depths of grief and rage against the systems and institutions that aim to repress and kill queer people of color.
Coursing through Let the Moon Wobble is the deep desire for wildness, freedom from convention and constraint, and to be seen. The speaker refuses erasure, often taking up so much space that they're impossible to ignore. Ultimately, we arrive at a place of hope and possibility where what's "freshly broken" can give way to blooming. Ang's debut is a testament to the ways queer joy and community can fuel resistance and allow us to imagine radical new ways of being.
About the Author :
Ally Ang is a gaysian poet & editor based in Seattle, WA. Their work has appeared in The Rumpus, Muzzle Magazine, ANMLY, and elsewhere. Ang is a 2023 National Endowment for the Arts fellow and MacDowell fellow. Their debut poetry collection, Let the Moon Wobble, is forthcoming from Alice James Books in 2025. Find them at allysonang.com or on Twitter and Instagram @TheOceanIsGay.
Review :
A 2026 Barbara Gittings Literature Award Honor Title
A Finalist for the 2026 Audre Lorde Award for Lesbian Poetry
"Let the Moon Wobble is a brilliant debut collection I encourage all readers of contemporary poetry to get their hands on. Ang's words act as an invitation to incite joy, a decree of justice, a celebration of queerness, and a mastering of poetic voice amidst a large variety of form."
--Sundress Reads
"In all of Ang's energy and excitement about poetry, there is a wisdom and depth to the understanding that celebration is a necessary antidote to our losses and fuels our fight against the terrible, monstrous, murderous, sponsored, and authorized state-sanctioned violence across this country right now. We don't know what's coming, but Ang's work is one way to prepare ourselves, one way to help keep ourselves and each other alive."
--Katie Lee Ellison, The Stranger
"This book is the newest debut here, and it was long-awaited. Published in 2025, it is a jittery love letter to our moon and it queers so much more than desire."
--Literary Hub
"Ang's debut volume of poems is a tour de force of passion, longing, and loneliness ... An important new poet to watch and read."
--Library Journal
"There is a certain rich earnestness and ardor in these poems that a reader cannot help but feel stirred and breathless at times."
--Sophie Bebeau, Bear Review
"This debut does not begin this writer's career modestly or on a small scale. Like their Seattle contemporaries, Ang blends humor and absurdity with grief and rage, and as a writer of color, tells on the systems and institutions functioning to repress and kill queer people of color. Ang seeks hope and freedom in these pages and, also like Sycamore's novel, reaches into their community for the fuel they need to keep going."
Lit Review Revue - The Stranger
Let the Moon Wobble is the debut poetry collection from Ally Ang, an Asian, Queer writer. Ang's poems gleam with queer pleasure and imagine a future where the freaks and bottom-feeders take center stage. The title comes from the opening line of the first poem, drawing on the lunar phenomenon of 'moon wobble' to evoke a queerness that is messy, off-kilter, and ungovernable. In these poems, Ang embraces the wildness of both nature and self, balancing irreverent joy with sharp critiques of pinkwashing and rainbow capitalism.
--Platform
"The emotions in Ang's poems jumped from the line and into my soul. They explore queerness without filter or apology. The poems are radiant."
--Debutiful
"Ally Ang's poems are made of houseplants and melatonin, leather and bloodstains, fresh fruit and rumpled bedsheets. They assert queer self-creation on the page in a poetic voice that is at once expansive and precise. Let the Moon Wobble is a striking, impressive first collection."
--Skylar Miklus, Electric Literature
"Ally Ang traverses capitalism's violent landscapes in search of xeranthemums and blackberries. But this is more than a hunt for pretty flowers and tasty fruit. It's a lifesaving quest to reclaim the stinky, the freaky, and the wild as allies. Let the Moon Wobble is a collection of invitations to forbidden, overlapping territories: pleasure and disgust, engagement and hopelessness, audacity and fear. With unapologetic candor and humor, Ang's poems carry us toward hardwon intimacy. These are poems as queer fruit: generous, spikey, ravenous, quenching."
--Shira Erlichman, author of Odes to Lithium
"Ally Ang is a poet who refuses the deadening distances of capital, borders, and patriarchy, embracing instead the richest, queerest intimacies of uncouth body, kinky breath, and collective revolt. These gorgeous, daring poems say: Let your eyebrows be as close as they want. Become the swine feral with love, the mango ungovernable with sweetness that this heartbreaking world needs. Welcome the moon's song in your belly, where it has always truly belonged."
--Chen Chen, author of Your Emergency Contact Has Experienced an Emergency
