Z.R. Ghani

Z.R. Ghani lives in London, UK. Her poems have appeared in Magma, Black Bough Poetry, Mslexia, Nine Arches press, and many more journals. Her first collection of poems In the Name of Red was shortlisted for the Poetry Wales Pamphlet Competition in October 2021, and it was published by The Emma Press in April 2024. Her poem "The Art of Cloying" from the pamphlet was featured in the British newspaper The Guardian as their 'Poem of the Week' in August that year. 

Easy read of the poems in the images above:

Through the jharokha

every sinew taut, in knots

yet time a broken string a sticky blade through

canvas was the intake of breath rollercoaster eyes

settled on the same flaw in the ceiling for days

watched it rot on and off into a jharokha

tears burrowed into my scalp when birdsong

wove an arch over me that miracle I would’ve overlooked

if it wasn’t for Covid the birds’ painful song was

an order from God so I obeyed while dreams

stalked the window to the afterlife (when the door

closed I opened giant lungs like shutters)

her voice made embers atrophy in alveoli threatened

to shatter me. the angel (not much of an angel

mind you) death. a punk rock goddess

hair for miles but tied into a cinnamon bun

her rasp Je suis la mort yeah I guess you could say

she’s likeable someone you’d break

bread with buried under necklaces heavier than

herself my fingers on the latch tarnished

so cold startled me awake you see she’d asked me

to come over and how could I say no