Poetry by Hannah Hamilton

                ​David Prasad CC



​untitled xix

not long ago, your bare arms browned in crowning circlets of weightless
sun. there was air & room in you, but it couldn’t be called emptiness. you had
yet to learn that grieving only happens in barren spaces. overnight, you became a fury
dripping black slick oil like pungent algae trailing behind you. you became separate
from the girl’s face you don for daily interactions and evening entanglements.
overnight, a chthonic spirit tired of what it means to work your fingers 

to the bone, wear through skin like honey dissolves into tea, to flex and clench 
hands with five protruding branches like unrobed vertebrae, a glossy grinning white,
to sleep with the dread of waking. you meant to go subterranean, disgusted by god 
and his swans trying to convince you to beware the soil and the grave and 
the quiet. they saw you lose yourself to passing storms, watched the lightning
score your face like mindless meteors clawing the surface of a distant planet.

you are scarred now. you look like a place fear visits when it needs the comfort
of a sure thing, has you on speed dial and shows up with enough riesling to
ply you loose and limber. you drove past a grove of trees today and wondered

how quickly you could plow into them, but you know god--he milks each orgasm
from you. you feel dirty after the spasms die down, but he distracts you with
the raising welts of being actively unloved, the rosewater scent that rolls off
your slack limbs like steam waves after receiving sex like a rightful punishment, 
the reaffirmation of how easy to leave you are. god revels and reviles, wants 

to get you wasted and too honest, a time when you can’t excuse yourself to the 
bathroom to sink onto stinking wet tile to pull composure back over your
shaking panic like a blanket. he wanted you to buy a gun and store it in
your closet like a sleeping lion, like a gatekeeper, and then to chain you to 

the mangy moth-eaten mattress of living. it wasn’t enough for him to see you
prostrate and feverous in his antler room. he wanted to hear 
you crack into granules, was willing to coax your admission 
through pleasure or pain until they became synonymous, until
you began to pray he would let you stop feeling anything if you just
gave him your testimony like a lost chapter from his pristine book, 

until you choke out:

i did, i slid from lap to lap, i tangled my fingers into the writhing 
hair of gorgons and withstood bite after bite for the brief
beauty of attentive fangs, i packed my heart in mud and 
let it char in the blistering hell of a ground oven, i walked 
over glass until my blood bleached the earth of purity, 
i treated my throat like a river to ferry shame, 
convinced a constant change in location 
might lighten the load. i lived, god, i shouted
and laughed until the world needed the clamor
of my uproarious fervor to spin, but 

it hurts to have nothing to show for all this 
noise, god, like a pathetic crushing farce,
a pitiful instrument fumbling to play itself. 




​
bury me at death valley

the important mission for birthday cake. september babies 
in the office, thick frosted edges and sprinkles baton-and-star
shaped. i drove from store to store, whoever had the right size.
a half sheet, lsu colors. who doesn't love football pride in 
a male-dominated workplace and their smirks and their brown
belts. i make their coffee, nothing has changed though i tell
you i'm a small light rising up in a dark world. how dark it

must be for those stupid fucking words like courage and triumph;
they don't get me up in the morning--my dog does. at night
dream-men rape whatever body i'm in. little dark haired boy.
tiny blonde girl. a young mother. sometimes, just me. then i 
wake up and pick up dog shit with a bag over my hand like
a glove. i try and i try to keep my head down and resent 

no one. how's that working out for me--it's not. everyday 
i get more too-ripe, a peach you should cut the bruises off but 
no one will pick up a knife anymore. i try to explain what 
the sound of a revving car-engine does to me, then stop talking.

who talks nowadays, they want to hear about all the baking
i do so i get puffy and hollow-eyed. the more there is of my
body, the less i want to be there. eating chicken tetrazzini 
on a couch in a house where no one cares about my bloody

head or the time i dug my lungs out of my chest like fossils 
from rock. archeological, archaic, shove it as far back in 
time as you can. but the wind still wears it into view, like
when the vacuum stops working and you have to take it all 
apart and he sodomized me, once. i kept asking please please

at least lube. at least something. please, a useless word.
who listens to women--no one. i bought happy birthday 
candles and a lighter. i think about coughing violently 
through a cigarette at my desk and letting someone else 

put it out on me. letting someone else
be angry.




Hannah Hamilton is an Iranian-American poet who works in records management and lives in Baton Rouge, Louisiana. Their work has appeared in Persephone's Daughters.