New life brought into the world We hold within us The power to change a nation A way of thinking Faces hidden behind veils Ingenuity on the wrong side of closed doors Words as old as time tell us that this is how it should be But we do not have to look far To […]
Oxfam 2016
Mind the Gap
i stand on a platform of unidentified faces, and business coats so long they flow over onto the tracks and make a swaddling sea of tweed and leather and polyester. i stand beside a beggar, wearing the night sky as his cloak; broken pieces of glass jabbed savagely into his sides, and the blood stains […]
An equilibrium?
“Inequality doesn’t exist anymore; If you work hard, you have the same chance as anyone.” Tell that to the infants Who are still sold before their first breath, Because another mouth is another death. Tell that to the girls Who are sold on their twelfth birthday, For their brother’s chance to thrive. Tell that […]
‘We are dying here’
She is in an abyss, A vacuum where no thoughts can be voiced, The words cling to chords, Unable to sneak past walls of teeth, Into the dust-choked air. Her story is old news, Dried up and dull, And like toddlers, we have tossed her problems aside, When they lasted too long and got too […]
The secrets of the dominant patriarchal plant
Pacing back and forth, 11pm at night, Redrafting and editing my work again, To make sure it is precisely right. The work in which I have become so invested, caffeine filled days and nights, And yet can’t expect to receive the same as Jim from the office, Despite equal pay entailed, in basic human rights. […]
Equals
I feel you over my shoulder and I try to remind you that this ring is not a magnet towards pots and pans. This ring does not sew a cleaning cloth to my hand. This ring does not mean I can’t understand maths. This ring is not a band of ownership, like a receipt at […]
United Unit
Our world is a unit, a spherical whole. An entity. An entirety. A wonder to uphold. In defining a ‘unit’, we understand one. This is the problem. It’s where we’ve gone wrong. Our world is not a lone, singular thing, As its heart is laced with infinite strings, Like a robust rope, a weaved tether, […]
Yousafzai
The blurry taste of blood / aromatic injury swelling in my lungs, in my mouth, in my throat. Kick me. Kick me again, and again, We are the cement; there is no wall without us. Where are your children? did you kill them all too? Driven to madness. Stripped of their youth. A bullet skims […]
Bed
My mother taught me to bleed based on the instructions of my grandmother– she made sure I might never forget. My daughters’ birthdays hurt like bee stings. He says I am ugly, which is why he wanted to touch me, my breasts swollen unchristian things, and painful; there was darkness wrapped inside my apology. […]