Poetry

L-R: Caleb Femi, alice hiller, Holly Pester, Ralf Webb and Cynthia Miller … Part of the prestigious Forward Prizes for Poetry, the Felix Dennis Prize for Best First Collection rewards ingenuity, skill, and boldness.

  … A weed:

* … Click here to download a screenreader accessible version of this poem. King Llanza (he/they) is from the Philippines. His poems have appeared in Quarterly Literary Review Singapore, Sledgehammer Lit, bind collective, amberflora, Voice & Verse, SAND and Cordite Poetry Review, among others.

* … Click here to download a screenreader friendly version of this poem. alice hiller’s Forward Prize shortlisted debut, bird of winter , responds to being groomed and sexually abused in childhood, and finding healing beyond this crime.

i. Muladhara … If we could reconstruct the temple of our bodies, we all know what we’d change first. A little demolition work in the zone of belly, some gutting around hips and bum, a coat of paint after weather-stripping the face.

If you ask me about water, this is the water I think about. The glow of myriad colours on the lake at night. Rickshaw drivers practising their English consonants and vowels with tourists as they pedal past the hutongs, earning five yuan each time—not even a pound.

t here’s  an art to arranging    … bones, laying them together     … by way of size, shape, density,   … to form a human  body;   … y ou need to be careful where the    … sternum crosses the chest or   … the rib cage cloisters sit…

Codex 10  … Rumi said Everything that is made beautiful and fair and lovely … is made for the eye of one who sees.  In 1973, the same year … my mother met my father, Steven Speilberg had just wrapped  … on American Graffiti.

I am shaped by borders. I was born with the privilege to cross these borders freely; I was born with light skin and a New Zealand passport. I am shaped by colonial islands. Aotearoa New Zealand on my dad’s side, and Sabah, Malaysia, on my mum’s side – formerly known as British North Borneo.

One of the many myths perpetuated by British colonial governments and its systems of propaganda is that Empire existed not for the economic benefit of Britain but to civilise, Educate (and Christianise) primitive peoples of the earth.

a crowd gathers around an empty frame … suspended from the ceiling / some see the … face of their saviour / others find … themselves lost in a tunnel / those at the … front with their chequebooks at the ready … have the audacity to call it Art / they’re all … correct / but they’re also wrong to…

'I think it be would be Whitney Houston does a grime inflected album, with special features from Rhianna, Stormzy, Skepta, David Bowie. Album artwork from either Tracey Emin or Carrie Mae Weems – maybe an artwork each side.

Here, take my brain, each last lobe … one hundred billion empty neurons … firing, its shocks so blunt, my thoughts disrobed; … bruises and wounds unhidden.

London is now three roundabouts. Each connected, each the same. All roads only lead to or from these roundabouts. No escape. But they’re big. Really big. London is now England and maybe even Europe. No one has settled anywhere, we all just keep driving, searching for somewhere else.

1.1.1 cousin wants the whakapapa … 1.1.2 cousin played reps back in the day … 1.1.3 cousin bringing the leftovers … 1.2.1 cousin baby four on the way … 1.2.2 cousin going up to the tangi … 1.2.3 cousin three jobs pretty busy … 1.2.4 cousin another month of curfew … 1.2.

My father hid in the basement … painting uniforms on metal soldiers, his finger tips … rough as bark. I climbed to the top of the cherry tree … to spy on the neighbors while I chewed on pits. Painting uniforms on metal soldiers, his finger tips … cracked from the paint thinner.

I pray to god every morning to bury me first … & I simmer to boiling point with melodrama. I keep it one hundred with sensation, music, oddities. Yesterday I called even a poem habibi. I licked the hardwood floors that held a memory … of your feet.

They said history was over. I wanted them … to be wrong. I wanted things to turn. I wanted a world I could find … beautiful on its own, without any … particular good news. I’d never had … a truth that could hold me.

They have walked all night … through the desert, this couple: José y Maria … and the baby. duermete mi niño … duermete por favor. Por favor. Their English isn’t great – they’ve got a bit. Yes sir. No sir. Thank you sir. They’ve got that down pat.

‘Picong’ is a Trinidadian word for taunting, and this poem addresses the experiences of colourism and cruelty that are so insidious and ubiquitous, not only culturally but within families.

Image via USFWS … 'Babes in the Wood' was commended in the 2018 Wasafiri New Writing Prize 'Poetry' category. Babes in the Wood … They have almost forgotten their own names, brother clutching sister’s hand. Birds devoured … their trail of crumbs.

Image by Khanya, The Designer … Winner of the Wasafiri New Writing Prize 2018 Poetry Category … and then i step outside my body the way you leave a house when someone is breaking in … and in the garden where the gorgons live, the topiary is singing … and he says…

Where the Weight Catches … In the Fat Giraffe shop … you find a wooden bucket … labelled South China, Antique … and you want to laugh: £45 … for a night-soil bucket!

Belly Dancer Meets Hilāl as Horseman … Hilāl, you scimitar of fajr-blue … spring above the vast patio … tousled with tendrils thick … as century, as rose-windows raying … a kiss in sujood. Here, arms sprawl … like date palms. Here, I’m falcon than fellahin … serpent than sequined.