Two Poems by Eve Esfandiari-Denney

Read two new poems by Eve Esfandiari-Denney – titled 'Parked ream of flesh near hijack' and 'I will eat your liver' – that weave together the everyday, banal, spiritual, and philosophical. Appearing in her debut collection, Girling (Fitzcarraldo Editions, 2026), the London-based poet's work documents how a young woman tries to search for moments of meaning, healing, and transcendence in a modern world.

Supported by a grant from the Open Society Foundations.

Parked ream of flesh near hijack

Morning light in the public garden. I walked beneath the vine-wrapped
pergolas feeling monastic. Not exactly like a nun but giving the bright
violet wisteria humbled admiration. Peace, sun halo, water rippling.
An urk of pain in my upper thigh twinges. I may have even limped a
little. Nothing unusual about the death thread this instigates. I reach
the nearby high street craving a Magnum. I pick up some gingerbread
men instead. The icing pearls my throat for talking. 'Let's have lunch
or dinner,' I voicenote, bank balance near empty. I recall a Rococo style
candelabra from Dangerous Liaisons. Get home. Burn a waffle. Roll out
the yoga mat for some inituitive Pilates. What brings me joy? What
are my strengths? What obstacles have held me back? I write it down.
Surely it's spring by now, I wonder, applying a tank top to my shrink-
ing. At dinner I chat shit about Danielle's lifestyle. I had a real fire-out
about it. Left hurting all the way to Sadie's opening. In Room 4 I'm sur-
prised to see my ex invigilating a pool of miniature swans. He smiles. It
doesn't matter. He can't articulate his wants. I'm a switch. Nothing but
birds and sky undulate between my soul and corporeal form. I sludge
up the stairs like a 10. Willing myself into hydration. Into agreement
with everything good. I'm feeling hot. So hot I look walled in by my 
own substance. Walled in by the accretion of pharmaceuticals. The 
increasing nausea. The thermal umbilicus from which everything 
originates and is tied off. I'm getting flush, no faint. It's obvious why.
I announce the news. The room seems nonplussed. By what exactly.
I said cancer. The blood cancer has come back. I need air. The future 
is contingent on the forwarding of my feet but someone wheels me to
the kerb. I wipe the smears from my face. It's like I'm suddenly beside 
myself. Like, even if rain sliced tridents of lightning. Made a vent in
the real. A feeling of more living could be turning and turning a bend.
Chaotic genotype. Constellations in dew. Standing then sitting. The 
glorious ever and ever. It's like I'm near hijack. Like I'll make a cry too
powerful for the throat that releases it.

I will eat your liver

There is a Farsi way
of making livers
romantic. The phrase
'I will eat your liver'
being idiomatic of 
yearning. Yearning
being idiomatic of 
the way nature has no
outline,
but imagination
does. Imagination
is the core
of a crush, I'd say.

And I don't mean
core like a ball
of white light.
I mean
layers of aerated
roots as fibres
passing through
an infinite linear
address space.

Imagine dismissing
the root
of a dream
when the dream
involves opening
a recordable
greetings card
playing your own
light breathing.

The handwritten
inscription evoking
an atmosphere
of time
straightened
by fire.
Why be cynical
about that?
Why assume
when we die
we are not
'prana', 'impetus',
we are not a flame
on ice
beating higher
and higher?
There is advice
for that.
There are units
in pavilions,
inseparable entities.

There are people
softening
due to a loss
of cohesion,
and there is a man
in my bedsit.
I'd eat his liver.
Not a speck
of blood 
on my prayer
mat, I've simply
kowtowed
under the pressure
of ticking
daylight;
outside of time,
it's like
time is botanical.
Resting
in the dark
of my stomach
my soul
is a tiny flower,
basically.

These two poems appear in Eve Esfandiari-Denney's debut collection, Girling, out on 10 September 2026 with Fitzcarraldo Editions.

Cover image: 'Agapanthus Flowers' by Claude Monet (1914-17)