AUSTRALIA: Read Single →
I had a black skin once,
but I took myself to the edges of the cliffs
and peeled myself,
until I was nothing but blood and bones
and even that I refuse to look at
and call as part of my own.
From ULR
Issue 5 – Human Rights
AUSTRALIA: and 2 other poems
Alienated essence, carrying decolonial and transnational trauma, finds fractured resilience. The body becomes memorys site for unacknowledged griefs bloom.
KENYA: Read Single →
My lips pucker,
but nothing comes out.
hope for the best,
I expect the worst,
because there is so much inside of me,
too much inside of me,
from the start of where life began,
to the days where the ends of times will see itself produced.
And I see both and none of it at once.
I feel like I belong to all of the world
despite being completely shunned.
and so I hope,
I wait,
I aspire,
but accept the fact that I am ignored and forgotten,
a speck on the spotlight,
that will someday blossom and grow.
UNITED KINGDOM: Read Single →
So many cultures
so many races
so many nations
so many skins
and you wouldn’t yet pause to think
that all of this wealth
all of this wonder
all of this greatness
the greatest things humans could ever look forward to
or imagine
or partake themselves in
came from the death, embezzlement, and destruction
of so many other people
who are now a part of your story
and yet blend in fully, all too fully
as if their heartache and loss were nothing but unturned stones.
Kiran Bhat
Kiran Bhat is an Indian-American author, traveler, and polyglot. He currently lives in Mumbai, but he has been to 147 countries, lived in 25 other places on the planet, and dabbles in twelve languages. He is known as the author of we of the forsaken world…, but has published books in five different languages, and has had his writing published in journals such as The Caravan, The Bengaluru Review, The Kenyon Review, Prairie Schooner, The Brooklyn Rail, 3:AM Magazine, SOFTBLOW, and many other places. You can follow him on Twitter at WeltgeistKiran.