my pen tiptoes and pirouettes
** Like bony streaks
of neglect on your lips
childhood weaves memory of me licking
my lips – a perforated curve of blood disappears
** Like time’s strokes of
undulation on your mural face
blood sprays my nail as my late granny pulls out
a dracula ant’s jaws out of my left toe’s cuticle
** Like a cathedral of excrement covered
in moony threads of obsolescence
my duckling’s feet embody a day’s death – evening, blue, silent
as i hold her gently like a bride’s hand
** Like a snail’s mucin gentler than birth
my mother’s smile is where my soul dwells
as she wrinkles gracefully like lactoderm
** Like sebum-soft throat of a child
on his funeral, i float on my friend’s dead eyes and his face
melts softening into cane sugar shine – sweet and unforgettable and scented
** Like the yolk-tender clit
birth is blood; so is maturity and death; girlhood
tufts and tints the series of age with cerise
** Like your hanging cuticle with a lump
of anxiety that claws your larynx
clusters of tremor dip slightly in my eyes as 17 yo I
choke on the stage mid-speech, and quit
and unfold my friend’s note that says, “Remember, you and ONLY you can be
Hafsa Mumtaz! Love you. ♡”
** Like pain swims through your nails
as ants picking on a once-alive roach
winter sizzles tingling under my dead budgie’s claws
as they become flaccid like young mushrooms
** Like decomposed leukocytes –
warm and anticipating escape…
Hafsa Mumtaz, aged 24, is an emerging Pakistani poet, and a student of M.Phil. English Literature. Her poem, “Lightning” was nominated for Best of the Net 2023. Her poems have appeared in Visual Verse, The Rising Phoenix Review, Journey of the Heart: Women’s Spiritual Poetry, The New Verse News, Poetry Potion, Autumn Sky Poetry Daily, Terror House Magazine, Ravi Magazine, The Sandy River Review, Couplet Poetry, Corvus Review, and HookMagazine. Her poems have also been featured in Bewildered Souls Anthology Vol. I by The Black Inks Publication.