his phone
is a bath filled with cold water so that each girl captured has to stay there, a ghost with goose-pimpled thighs shivering in the depths of a smeared screen. Still, he waits for new flesh to be drowned, dragged thrashing to him, so he can devour each silver fish as left-overs, sucking tender bones out of the spaces between his teeth, a trembling reflection stolen, a spoilt stream.
The Voyeurism Bill, known colloquially as the Upskirting Bill, came into force in the UK on 12 April 2019.
Continue reading “In the Eye of the Storm: 5 Poems for Radio by Anja Kanngieser”
Was on a plane, the other day, and took a picture of clouds outside my window…
Sometimes we run restless
We live present.
سلاما على من تطرقوا الموت وعادوا أطيافاً
We know it.
and in the rush, we lament
fugitively against your
edgings
*
Today I saw ghost-ling trees
and they spoke so vividly through the fog
on roots
and groundings
The archons come
to claim
but the roots are too stubborn that only water can go through
to ground
our re/turn
to visions of living far from us that
claim our anger (we rejoice in anger)
and the feel-s of it rush too much
like lavender or
cardamom pods deep soaked in water…
*
We live present.
سلاما على من تطرقوا الموت وعادوا أطيافاً
We know it.
and in the rush, we lament
fugitively against your
edgings
Glitch Sonnet
for 1 dollar I will hold your hand and for 2 dollars I will be your big fat snowflake. for 3 I will
mean mug your enemies and for 4 dollars I will be a good girl and for 5 I will sun burn. for 6
dollars I will middle part. for 7 dollars I will make you tingle. for 7 I’ll be a bad boy. for 7 I will
self destruct and for 7 dollars I will complete you. for 7
oh apple oh silk
oh pumice stone oh tweeze
oh bath
oh sex kitten
oh green sweater
oh the dribble oh the money
this meal this sheet
oh baby oh sugar baby dribble baby
oh apple yes sweater stone oh 7 dollar
tweeze baby oh
A Ghost Poem
Continue reading “A poem by Juliane Okot Bitek”
My grandmother’s neighbor came over crying and yelling about how she couldn’t find one of her budgies and she was afraid the worst had happened to it. She lived in the studio next door and I went in not knowing what to expect. I had been in an old lady’s home before, my grandma’s for instance, but I got the sense that once you hit a certain age (and grandma wasn’t there yet) you lose track of things. Things like order, and dustpans.
Continue reading “The Budgies of Broadway by K Dulai”
Uncanny Projections
I haven’t visited grandma much
but we dance in astral meadows.
Mom calls one day, I’m knee-deep
in books, says grandma is seeing
her father, hearing brackish hymns
in her bedroom where my grandpa
has not slept in months. I do not see
her that night, only lilacs glinting
in a burnt orange sunset. What?
she yells and I hear her from years
away. Mom calls one final time,
grandpa cannot handle her screams
for voices he cannot hear, and I sip
black tea and slumber, meet her
again in the meadows where lilacs
now burn and the sky now weeps
BURNING HOUSE PRESS 