Tuesday poem #685 : Ben Berman Ghan : $2[.]75

 

Help!
I                   know            going
          Don’t           what’s           on.
A dog keeps barking in my
Head & the movements of
His tails say all things are
Within reach without cases
          Oh
                     My god
Does your husband know about
Penmanship?
                     Oh
          My god
Three decades scratching out in pleasing
Ink.
          I thought to part with pennies
For the sake of smiles and silly things
                               What
                     Do you mean this
          Pen costs nearly 300$
Pfffffffffff — oops
All my inks I take for free

 

 

 

 

Ben Berman Ghan is the author of The Years Shall Run Like Rabbits (Buckrider Books 2024), as well as Behold the Dead (Anstruther Press 2025), Visitation Seeds (845 Press 2020), and What We See in the Smoke (Crowsnest books 2019) His second collection of fiction, The Library Cosmic, is forthcoming with Buckrider Books for spring 2026. His prose, poetry, and criticism have previously been published in Clarkesworld Magazine, Strange Horizons, The Ex-Puritan, and The Ancillary Review of Books, and has been reprinted in such anthologies as Year’s Best Canadian Fantasy and Science Fiction. His work has won the Foreword INDIES Award for Science Fiction, and longlisted for the Sunburst Award for Excellence in Canadian Literature of the Fantastic, Ben is a PhD Candidate in English and creative writing at the University of Calgary, where he lives with his partner and two cats. Find him at inkstainedwreck.ca

the Tuesday poem is curated by rob mclennan

Tuesday poem #684 : Amirah Al Wassif : Ode to Eve

 

 

 

I still recall the last time I spoke to an alien, or perhaps merely imagined it to be so. It happened immediately after the first drops of blood—later known as menstruation—appeared. I curled up in a corner, watching the wall where it walked in transparent attire, playing cards next to a widow spider. I don't know if it was truly a widow, but perhaps my mood at the time made me assume it.
From that moment, I imagined Eve dreaming of the respectable apple. Imagined her exhausted, suffering the cycle. Imagined her startled by the fact of her femaleness. I saw her in my mind attempting to flee the obsessive-compulsive disorder, the doubt, and the petty anxieties. Imagining herself pregnant, her belly immense, and her legs swollen from fluid retention. I pictured her with one eye open and one eye closed, like a resting wolf.
Then the alien suddenly stung me; I opened my eyes and found it wearing Adam's mask, recounting the familiar story from the perspective of the victim who fell into the trap of temptation

 

 

 

 

Amirah Al Wassif is an award-winning poet and published author. Her poetry collection For Those Who Don’t Know Chocolate was published in February 2019 by Poetic Justice Books & Arts, followed by the illustrated children’s book The Cocoa Boy and Other Stories in February 2020. In 2022, Bedazzled Ink Publishing Company released her poetry collection How to Bury a Curious Girl, and her latest collection, The Rules of Blind Obedience, was published in December 2024.

Her work has appeared in numerous print and online publications, including South Florida Poetry, Birmingham Arts Journal, Hawaii Review, The Meniscus Chiron Review, The Hunger, Writers Resist, Right Now, Reckoning, New Welsh Review, and Event Magazine, among others.

the Tuesday poem is curated by rob mclennan

Tuesday poem #683 : Kiik Araki-Kawaguchi : i will leave when mountains walk

 

 

 

I will leave when mountains walk

And mountain giant obliterates me

I will leave though first I will be

A thousand invisible creatures

Vole and wasp and a little bramble

Who keep praying

Let me never fucking leave

And I will burn every angel

Who comes for me

Until all my robes

Are the robes of dead angels

I will leave when I have been crushed

By every tree in the forest

And if after my 6000 rebirths

I have no eyes to see you

No ears that hear you

And I am slug not even cute-ugly

Ok time to hang em up

After this last game

I lie down

You leap

Scatter your dreams across me

 

This poem was inspired by, and borrows language from, “Rune Poems from Bergen, Norway, Thirteenth and Fourteenth Century” by an unknown author, translated from the runic alphabet by Eirill Alvilde Falck. 

 

 

Kiik Araki-Kawaguchi is the author of DISINTEGRATION MADE PLAIN AND EASY (Piżama Press) and THE BOOK OF KANE AND MARGARET (FC2 / UAP).

the Tuesday poem is curated by rob mclennan