by Zakia Carpenter-Hall | Jun 26, 2026 | Featured, Poetry, Uncategorized
Khair At the feet of al-Ka‘ba you asked for a daughter. You named me Khair – Blessing. I answered inside you forcing myself into your ribs remaking you in the emptiness of your lungs. in the space he made— his shoes left in the...
by Zakia Carpenter-Hall | Jun 24, 2026 | Featured, Poetry
Smashing Narcissus We set about him with rifle butts and spades, waiting our turn alongside our enemies, the same sunburnt flesh, the same blistered feet. Met where our camps, the same badly pitched shelters, the same lack of meat, converged. Laboured...
by Zakia Carpenter-Hall | Jun 23, 2026 | Featured, Poetry
She remembers the house of her husband He’s not, as they said he is: loathsome, most monstrous. He has a strange and sinister beauty. His eyes are obsidian, shot through with gold, a ruby burning in each. A noble brow, and magnificent cheekbones. You can...
by Zakia Carpenter-Hall | Jun 22, 2026 | Featured, Poetry
Renegade Voices I am most visceral when being disarmed by a song, a lyric written and sung… in the broad New Yawk vowels of Dean Friedman. The scowl of Dylan. The scat and growl of George Ivan. Matthew Devereux’s demonic staccato. Pierce...
by Helen Ivory | Jun 20, 2026 | Featured, Poetry
Wake (Leaving Amorgos, Greece) The ferry pushes the sea, forces a long, white reply that speaks of where we’ve been – a hulk of rock, a prison in the time of the Colonels, now a place of painted chairs, fairy lights. I lean over, try to read...
by Helen Ivory | Jun 19, 2026 | Featured, Poetry
A November anniversary In a corner chapel of the abbey I lit a small candle, and sent the flame as a message only half composed to somewhere I hardly believed in. Room is restricted on the ferry: six cars, a few pedestrians and dogs, all of us...
