Issue #30.12 A Triple Issue: Hibah Shabkhez, Emma Johnson-Rivard, Ron Riekki
A Poem by Hibah Shabkhez
Kites Look Better At A Distance
Bow-tailed, fluttering their bright colours against the blue of the sky as the flowers do upon the green of the earth, kites look glorious in the spring. Like ice shining out of sugarcane juice in summer, like the flicker of a fire from a window in winter, they make the heart leap and sing. Up close, they turn into frail, gaudy strips of paper glued to hunchbacked sticks. Rats and I hate each other: there is an instant, lasting revulsion. Cats and I start out as friends, until the realisation hits: this fluffy, gambolling thing is a vicious predator. Thus it is also with the kites of autumn, brown-winged and eerie, gliding upon the wind in their svelte formations: when they settle on the tree, two feet from my face, there is only the stench of death and the cold, cruel eyes boring into mine.
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Hibah Shabkhez is a writer and photographer from Lahore, Pakistan. Her work has previously appeared in Arc Poetry, Meniscus, Thimble, Harpur Palate, Frogmore Papers, Potomac Review, and a number of other literary magazines. Studying life, languages, and literature from a comparative perspective across linguistic and cultural boundaries holds a particular fascination for her.
Linktree: https://linktr.ee/HibahShabkhez
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Two Poems by Emma Johnson-Rivard
hemophilia
my condition demands bruises too easily, the darkened shine ugly on the skin, a knot touching bone. i’m told you learn to live with these things (or not), banked on such seminal truths as fuck around and find out;
this being less about karma and more on the way gravity tilts the soul through the earth. rats only commit cannibalism when forced into starvation conditions and hemophiliacs have a tendency to die in car crashes. nonetheless, i still travel. i have seen some small slice of the globe and all its gravity.
today, we are marching to town hall and some girl got her head bashed in by a cop and i am bruised from nothing important, not yet dead from a car crash or the gravity of genetics, laying words on a line like a bruise, each one chosen with such care.
The Cat Eats a Roach
The cat took the legs apart, crushed a soul between her paws. Tooth and press to pressure, bearing down. These are the animal ways, the metaphor stuck imperfect.
We swim in the sun, killing roaches. Saying, it cannot be helped. We had to.
Yet, it was alive. It was there.
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Emma Johnson-Rivard is a doctoral student in creative writing at the University of Cincinnati. Her work has appeared in Strange Horizons, Coffin Bell, Red Flag Poetry, and others. She can be found at Bluesky at @blackcattales and at emmajohnson-rivard.com.
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A Poem by Ron Riekki
The Title of This Poem
is hidden. Our relationship, a tension pneumothorax. Last week,
there was a moment, in the car, with the downed telephone line,
where we debated whether or not to drive across it. We didn’t. We
had to go around the other side of the world to get home. You
told me it’s better to be alive. I debated you.
A few years ago—
another relationship—I decided to drive through the flood, not
realizing that cars can float. It was only for a little bit, making
it through, but the water destroyed the front bumper, but we made it.
I remember driving on the other side, the car bleeding, its guts
dripping, our hyperventilation thoughts, and feeling we were
postmodern queens, like suns were in our chests, and the cost
just about killed me. I tell you I wish I was nameless.
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Ron Riekki has been awarded a 2015 The Best Small Fictions, 2016 Shenandoah Fiction Prize, 2016 IPPY Award, 2019 Red Rock Film Fest Award, 2019 Best of the Net finalist, 2019 Très Court International Film Festival Audience Award and Grand Prix, 2020 Dracula Film Festival Vladutz Trophy, 2020 Rhysling Anthology inclusion, and 2022 Pushcart Prize. Right now, Riekki's listening to "Spoon on Austin City Limits 'Inside Out.'"
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