Category: Poetry

By Breannah Holton

The time for mourning ended five minutes ago,

I have on a petticoat and a smile.

I cannot afford rent this month, so I take my things, leave the gas stove on and light a candle as prayer.

The boy says he hates my body hair, but I do not shave, instead I skin nine rodents and nail their fur to his wall.

I am whistled at from a car, so I make noise so loud they can only hear ringing now.

My boss makes a joke I cannot stop laughing at, he’s the one that ends up in stitches.

My therapist calls this lashing out.

A friend of a friend criticises the way I walk in a dress, I rip the hem and sew it together with her hair.

My therapist says I need to journal.

So, I author an acrostic poem with every foul word that fits, fold it up and put it in the pocket of the person texting at the funeral.

I do this so that when I die my eulogy will be nothing more than sneer and spit on my grave.

My will will be that I acted as I pleased.

By Aaliyah Angir

One day, Sir changed the seating plan

somehow we’d fallen into girls on one half, and boys on the other.

I didn’t know what to do, I was left alone at a table.

But then you,

My friends were blushing cherry red, to have an excuse to sit with their crush!

But I was left alone on the other side of the classroom,

with you.

I let you copy my notes; let you copy my work, my jokes.  

Because I didn’t know what to do with you.

I guess in a way, I saw you as more of a hindrance.

I guess in a way, I’ve always known.

Featured Image: Rajiv Salunkhe

By Breannah Holton.

Feel my face first, drop your weapons and touch,

I won’t drop my fists but tense every tendon starting from my wrists,

Please be tepid to the touch.

I promise a reading of your temperature, if you promise I won’t burn my tongue

Why be comfortable? always be sceptical,

Promise you won’t gather your weapons and run.

From finger to thumb, raise me your trepidatious hand,

Feel around for bone and find my spine, burrow your hands in my pits,

“So tomorrow, you have any plans?”

You should shudder, prove this is a double-blind affair…

From finger to palm, from flesh to bone, ask with fear and trembling

“What are you?”

And i’ll drop my weapons and touch.

Curiosity and tenderness, curiosity and care,

they’re forming here in my sentence,

As I feel throughout your hair.

Kiss my hand or bite it, the intent is all the same,

consume me whole, with no restraint

Let self-preservation persuade you, and you’ll have only yourself to blame.

Hold your nerve as I hold you to mine,

undress my face, hold it far but firm,

I’ll kiss your bruises; I do this while your blind,

But I find, I am no panacea to your problems, no ointment to your burns,

You say I abandoned you,

I say I saved us both,

Because I left when undressing you finally became my turn.

I left my weapons and ran.

Featured Image: Cosmos

 

By Aaliyah Angir

 

Plough on, plough on 

into the night 

the fledgling calf 

driven on by

the farmer’s might 

 

Plough on, plough over 

the pungent fright 

ripped from her

mother 

no time to fight 

 

Plough on, plough on 

the bitter taste 

of cold iron,

metallic blood

the farmer’s haste 

 

Plough on, plough in 

to biting cold 

empty expanse

till flesh grows old 

plough on.

 

 

Featured Image: Thérèse-Marthe-Francoise Cotard Dupré, Dans le clos de la ferme. Musée des Beaux-Arts Jules-Chéret, Nice.

 

By Breannah Holton.

I hear murmurs, my sister speaks in her sleep now,

not eloquently nor coherently, more like a struggle to form a word but I know,

it’s like a sister code, that only I, not just I, but me and her and my other sister know,

if you listen closely, you’ll hear not breathing but steam blowing through their nose,

with eyes closed and heads bowed rest makes pain appear peaceful now, but I know,

bed creaks as though sighs and vengeful resolves all at once, 

unlike God they do keep record of wrong.

They can’t help what they are.

Forgive them while they sleep for they know not what they do, but I know,

and they can’t sleep, so maybe they do too.

Featured Image: Hilal Özkanli

By Daniel Ali

I have relinquished this godforsaken title as a poet,
I am merely communicating. Matching and pairing
words in a line, one to follow the other and form a
sequence of words.
I understand them to be known as sentences.

I write with my soddened quill
It trails with the Inks of thought.

Undo my words and split them in –
two sounds if you must, speak them,
hear them but take them as they are.

My mind cannot help but analyse, it cannot stop
from poeticising the world as I see it. I see sound
in colours, I can smell a feeling and I can hear a
smell!

Disgusting. This insatiable need to
metamorphosise undressed existence into something
worth reading, but why is it not worth reading
as it is?

Find me on the corner of a street, sat on a bus or walking through my hometown.

Watch me stop; only for a few seconds.

Observe me looking at a flower,
see how my fingers caress its petals.

I notice a thorn and walk away.

Featured Image: Clark Young

By Ashley Zhou

we sit with folded arms and wonder about eternity.
must be god, you say, convincing;
convinced, i say, and he’s in the coffee.
it’s bitter today; they ran out of sugar.
god wouldn’t make shit coffee, i joke,
ah, the recession’s hit heaven. ah!
the angels are haloed by overhead lighting, ah!
arms sometimes unfold to reach for a sip,
bitter, ah, now cold as well, mh.
heaven is a place on earth, somewhere blasts,
carlisle from tinny cafe speakers.
we disagree respectfully.
las vegas is on earth, not possible!
a woman behind us pipes in.
her chair drags over, it scrapes the tiles.
seats shuffle, arms fold.
heaven’s in the ground, she begins;
words steam over her cup.
you sip from yours and grimace.
i sip from mine and one acrid drop reaches my tongue.
ah, empty. i’ll have another, then. 
Featured Image: Lübna Abdullah