In hell, you can draw a blank and nothing happens. I have proof. My dog is afraid of birds. My son has never fallen asleep in his wheelchair. I eat, and my shadow has a dream smaller than that of any fish. This is not hell. The past is abandonment
looking
for an equal.
Thinking it matters when, god tells us we’re dead.
Sadness never gets around to introducing its young.
Poverty
hates
magic.
Unless they die,
babies
make movies
longer.
Angel is what I call my plan
to catch a ghost.
Glacial, this spiritual panic. But also, sudden. The bluest of left fields. I know the order of the last three deaths I was near and I know the order I put them in. I am up most nights either sick or wondering why I am not. Circa 1995 I was driving Gen home, it was late, and a cop pulled me over for a dim license plate light and he made us describe to him what we were wearing while he shook his flashlight as if fire had discovered him and had kneeled. It took some time to get home that night. Time, long as nakedness. As a kid I cried for years after hearing of the soul but really it was about this one toy I wanted to take to heaven. And now I have these four children who can cry backward. Who can die. Who can be secretly sad but even moreso secretly happy. Poetry knows we only learn to read once, and doesn’t know that there’s nothing younger than sleep. My hand has been a handful of hospital snow.
To worship god is to love the ghost of the alien you dream of killing. When I was a child, there were no children. All of them had guns. Most of my teeth hurt from forgetting
that blue
wants to be
a circle.
You can’t lose your memory in a thunderstorm
–
Every surgeon
but my son’s
surgeon
has
a lookalike
–
The plate in god’s head
is older
than god
–
Those cricket
funerals
took so long
to plan
from poem Gameshow Fatalities, in book Ghost Arson (Kung Fu Treachery Press, 2018)
~
if interested in reviewing, contact me at ghostarson@gmail.com
book is 15.00 / orders for signed copies can be made via paypal to ghostarson@gmail.com or by using link:
PayPal.Me/ghostarson
or via Venmo: @Barton-Smock-1
*be sure to include your address in the notes field
or one can send a check to:
Barton Smock
5155 Hatfield Drive
Columbus, OH 43232
~
REVIEWS:
~
interview by Crystal Stone for Flyway Journal
~
Just putting this here…a co-worker of mine recently lost his wife and is in need of help with funeral and funeral related costs. He is a great guy and has two daughters, and life can be very lonely. If you can, please donate here
“Kazim Ali’s newest collection of poems is brilliant and chilling and filled with sound. The Voice of Sheila Chandra is alive with formal invention and innovation that will surely be a fixture in contemporary poetry for years to come. Part researched document, part song, part deep excavation of the soul, there is much to learn from this book. Ali forces us to contend with history & the present in order to imagine a future where we survive.”
—sam sax
pre-order here
/////
reflections at {isacoustic*] on other works by Kazim Ali:
http://isacoustic.com/2018/06/29/silver-road-essays-maps-calligraphies-kazim-ali/
http://isacoustic.com/2018/03/19/inquisition-poems-kazim-ali/
~
fromanimal masks on the floor of the ocean
long gone are the insects
you forgave
this storm, the whale
of oblivion’s
white feast, this moon
the word
moon
*
I go places
in my ghost
that are children
when I arrive. they call me
high grass, lord
of the wind’s
blood. most of them
have lost
babies
with dog
names
to birth
or touch, our brief
attractions
to déjà vu
*
to be unthought of is to be one more person away from pain. no cricket you hear is alone. in my boy’s drawing of jesus, the ears are all wrong. his first sad poem is about an oven. his second calls dust the blood of a seashell. his third is so terrible that I tell my friends I’m just a gravedigger who wants to open a hair salon. my friends they are made of grief and brilliance…
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like everyone else
I only smoke
at funerals
kingsoftrain 