Illustration by Tehreem Ali
We have no knees; look how we claw
For scraps of blue despite it.
The books we edit comprise pages
Retrieved from sarcophagus of our knee-skins.
She came to us with her Colossus
In a heavy bind. A red brick,
Asked us to smash on our heads
Till the meaning seeped in.
But so many bricks we have smashed
Upon our heads, there isn’t much skull left.
And you got to do that, you know:
Smash a book like it’s a brick.
She came to us, pen in hand, our heads
In a ribbon for her. With a Herculean stroke, she
Smashed her Ariel on heads and fell,
Fell further than Icarus.
Now years have passed by.
No other brick has been concrete enough
For its meaning to seep in
And we miss a smashing.
There are no Herculean strokes anymore,
Mostly poets pledging for the class and coin.
We have no knees, hence no knee-skin pages left.
Just these Icaruses falling in dozens.
Tehreem Ali is a literature-linguistics student by field but a writer at heart. She self-published her first fiction novella at the age of fifteen. Art, anarchism, music, animals, and writing are the center of her world. She aspires to show the world, through her writings, that there are no rules in art. You will find Tehreem’s writings to be a mixture of polar opposites, with Sylvia Plath, Alan Ginsberg, and the like as major influences. The world might not be ready yet for voices like hers. Follow this link to keep up with Tehreem or check out her blog here.
