It’s a bad habit I picked up
when still living out my pack of lies
& can’t quite shake
attention like a drug
I keep shooting
down the highways of my wanting veins
exposing myself to men
like a circus curiosity
the Amazing Chick with a Dick Continue reading “Confessional by Meeah Williams”
Because I stood up & threw half-hearted punches
at unimpressed bullies for you
I got beat down & climbed back up
spitting blood & seeing stars for you
I struck out, dropped routine fly balls
& ran to first base like a girl for you
I looked at your skin mags
& confused tried to masturbate for you
I drove 120 mph through a brick wall
& lived at the bottom of the ocean
all through high school for you
grew gruff & distant & a little crazy
to prove I wasn’t a momma’s boy,
got married, divorced, and finally
even tried to take my unlived life
for you.
When I failed even to die as I should
I decided it would be the very last thing
I ever did for you.
The next morning
I rose before the sun
& washed the puke & shit
of birth from my body
& I dressed in the clothes
that suited me
& I called myself by a name
I could honestly answer to
& I left the door open behind me
though I didn’t expect
you to follow
& I got in the car & I drove
Continue reading “Don’t Say I Did Nothing For You by Meeah Williams”
Emma Miles is a English graduate and writer, with a particular interest in typography and all things experimental. Most commonly found pretending to be other people.
we, the children of this revolution
who came to it all from fields afar
not born beneath a dissident star
of parents dressed in shades of green
but found we belonged only in between
and here we stand, and here we’ll fall
and we’ll die together
or not at all
we, the children of this revolution
who carry our books instead of swords
who taught ourselves, despite it all
who search for truth wherever it lies
and see the world through suspicious eyes
here we stand, and here we’ll fall
and we’ll die together
or not at all
Continue reading “Children of the Revolution by Emma Ireland”
it won’t do,
grandmother said,
to show bare legs.
you need smoothness
and muscle tone—
not to mention the
barrier between
the hands of men
or even their eyes
and your flesh.
no silk to be had,
and there’s a war,
by the way.
but, still—
the illusion must
remain intact,
nothing’s changed!
When she speaks, the penny bomb drops,
When she decides to say #MeToo #TimesUp
When she remembers, but doesn’t voice it out loud,
When the Ace woman speaks and says ‘Don’t touch me there’,
When the Bi woman speaks and says ‘Actually I’m happily married’,
When the drag queen speaks and says ‘stop bothering me’
It isn’t a challenge, a threat to your identity,
She’s telling you her boundaries.
They are not up for negotiation,
negation, conquering, obliteration,
her body is not your inclusive space.
She doesn’t need your arrogant attempt at re-education.
When she speaks, the penny bomb drops.
puckered tight,
disapproving lips,
where threads have
pulled and gathered
red and white gingham
checks across a chest
that doesn’t know how
to expand, just yet.
tennis shoes tied
in double knots,
sun licking pavement
until it is gooey,
spongy with heat. Continue reading “S(mocked) by Juliette van der Molen”
I am a straight ally.
And I choose to make an oath to all that choose to hear it
I will defend the different dissonance, I will stand with
those told who to love and when to love and how to love
those told that they cannot have.
Those told that they are somehow lesser, that being gay is a joke
That being Trans* is just convenient cover for a pervert
Those told that simply being anything other than straight is not normal, Is deviant, is ‘other’
I make this oath because of the things I see
I see forty-nine threads cut short, I see the right to pee safely being ruled by fear
I see the rules of divorce still governed by straight law
I see secure employment being based on your sexual orientation
I see religion twisted into hate, I see corrective rape, I see murder
I see you, queer girl, your slip shed soul constantly bruised from unwanted advances
When a man reeking of arrogance says,
“You’ve never had a real man, bet I’ll give you a good fuck”
Continue reading “A Song From a Straight Ally by Suzanne Fraser-Martin”
I have ten minutes here,
Less than ten in this press of people, before I go through those gates
to tell you that, Berlin was beautiful, a free celebration of all love
The Self-Owners, The Island, The Girlfriend, The Schwanenberg.
Then under the strict shadow of a worded paragraph I am now a number
Scratched into my skin, my name pressed into records,
between pages and pages of names.
Before Berlin was lights and love and music, gay bars and open study
Here is mud obscuring my identity,
photographed from three angles,
in grim stripes and triangles
we become homogeneous herd, corralled into camps.
oh 200 grams of you
today they told me you will be a woman
a girl, a girl
we are having a baby girl
I will be a father
and with this great news
I’m hurt by the privilege
that exists
that continues existing
that besides all of the battles
will exist when you are born
remember
you don’t have to be a princess
or wear pink
(unless that be your desire)
He who may be she
used to think playing piano
was a way to touch god, or at least
something beyond the window
not made of tarmac, livid body
parts. Such a god, music-mother,
swaggering-string-weaver, hip-horn rooster, took him
(as teachers then stamped her,
with the authority of corridors
going nowhere), took her mind off
Who is Panya the Poet and what does she do?
I am a writer, primarily, and an archivist. I mainly write poetry although I have written some children’s stories and I’m toying with a novel. I also run Nottingham Black Archive and as part of that, a Black Writers Network. It’s all about raising awareness, helping with professional development and showcasing local black talent through a range of different initiatives. Read a Black Author for example which happens in October and where people are invited to read together in Slab Square. I organised a poetry weekender for Windrush 70 featuring Kei Miller then looking do a Festival next year – not just poetry but MC’s, grime and singers because we’re network of all kinds of writers. I want to showcase the talent, because that’s just not happening. Continue reading “‘Some Things’ – A BURNING HOUSE PRESS interview with PANYA BANJOKO – by Trevor Wright”
Reading Liber Exuvia by Elytron Frass is to enter the murmuring memoirs of an astral traveller. Is to encounter the self as it is – not as fixed point or outpost in temporal time but self as vaporous, porous and atemporal – self as ghost haunting the flesh, spectre sojourning the house of mist. Self as fracture, fact amassed and massacred, exploding and imploding in all directions, past present future for infinity. Everywhere and everyone and everywhen. Continue reading “Liber Exuvia – Elytron Frass – gnOme books”
‘Cause I am not this body
that imprisons me.
-The Mountains Goats, Isaiah 45:23
Cocaine aspect ratio move out I want to see it in full
lonely breakwater, lonely pebblebeach storming
over the underpass like a ghost of a girl knocked by
the wind, cocaine aspect ratio move in to see the detail
on your sullen face, the way your eyes move from
floor, to wall, to door, to garden, to windowpane Continue reading “The Only Trans Girl at the Party II by Alison Rumfitt”
I know you are tired of hearing me talk about my complexion. How I quiver when I flow out of my house with a tabula rasa and see skins recoil with revulsion. Some do it with fear, others point, ripple, and giggle and call me dirty, ugly, but quite pretty for my race. My face. My hair. Oh! She’s surprised that my dreads smell great. Who would ever have thought that anyone with dreadlocks could smell so nice! I know you are tired of hearing me talk about how the gatekeepers of this world have a different set of hoops set aside purposely for those packaged like me to leap through. How like the video games I play, there is always a higher hoop to scale, impossible levels to complete… so I can enter your countries, so I can enter your schools, so I can find love, so I can get a job, so I can dance like you. Continue reading “They Think Me Dirty by Mercy Ananeh-Frempong”
Body a fragile thing
burgeoned by words Continue reading “When the Sickness is a Permanent Physical Thing by Gervanna Stephens”
A pair of paradox, or pandora’s box
We are forgotten yesterdays of tomorrow,
note-booked mementos on thighs time travelled,
back from the future, a few tsha-tsha with flashes
blackouts and gray-matter gashes,
the slurred dance of good memory,
crib-notes on collar-bones,
bare chest, a loose tie, knots, not around neck
formal education white suits, tucked-in remembering.
A formal date chasing me indoors.
chasing me into doors of consistent
nurturing nature of the neuro
doors on the right, left doubt in the cold.
A manner of hindsight sighs. Continue reading “Art + Poetry by nublaccsoul”
k23
when I was first introduced to the whole gender conundrum I tested whether or not I might be a boy by letting the end of my vibrator hang from my vagina and fill my panties with purple plastic. so similar. Continue reading “Two poems by Alexis Diano Sikorski”
1. The Kitchen
Dear Louise,
eight days and nights of the painbirds –
flapping and feeding and shitting voices into me.
I sit, or pace up and down stairs,
or try to lie down,
or hide,
crouching behind the Ikea clothes rail
in our bedroom. Continue reading “Number 18 by Paul Hawkins”
BURNING HOUSE PRESS 