Zarah Alam
Two Poems
Song of Circe’s Sty
human mask back/ goddess/ lady/ my human mask back/ humanness back/ to rip it away like that/ left me/ left my skin all pink/ hear me/ all puckered up like/ bloated flavoursome flesh/ grind me/ a salve/ lady/ or better yet/ invest in a larger cage for me and mes/ we wild little oddities/ animals with minds and fears of men/ who you continue to torture with inattentiveness/ and rotten apples/ oh mud upon you/ in this new brown and pink splotched hell/ hear me/ steel your grey glare upon me/ goddess/ lady/ a fresh slice of apple from time to time/ hear me/ and oh lady/ please lady/ my name/ hear my name/ need to hear my name graze the air
Miscomputation
You eat your sunday until the rain spots.
There he is, hulked over
Like a child curdled in the corner
Crying over spilled silk, cheeks as red as noses.
You waltz over, couch drown,
Call an alcatraz and wait for thrifty minutes
Until you see its boo and real lates
But keep in your temperature and nod politically
At their impassiveness.
All the way into the alcatraz
He complains about your unclear massage
You lark as he hugs E-NUN-CI-ATE.
Zarah Alam is an aspiring novelist and poet from Birmingham. She graduated with a first-class in English and Creative Writing from the University of Birmingham and is a HarperCollins Author Academy alumna. Her poetry has featured in The Stinging Fly, The North magazine, Streetcake magazine, Ad Alta: the Birmingham Journal of Literature, Spark Young Writers Magazine, and more. Her debut pamphlet Enough was shortlisted for the Poetry Wales Pamphlet Competition. Zarah founded and leads the Virtual Poetry Club for the National Literacy Trust’s Birmingham Stories Project.
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