In her new chapbook, Lovebirds, Zaheer presents 12 vivid flash stories about relationships, faith, violence, loss, and desire.
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Pinioned Wings: Love, Violence, and Spirituality in Hananah Zaheer’s Lovebirds
Signed for the Unsigned
by Stella Santamaría
/ imported by the cities of / howling beach =artificial coral / on the bone knife of my corona / ring of past
Smoking with Art
by Patricia Feinman
Our hair and every piece of clothing we owned were impregnated with the stench of smoke—we stank of smoke—but we didn’t care, because we loved smoking.
Scaffold
by Jad Josey
How to say that we are all / of these stars, that I want / the suffering I cause to be less / than the raindrops on the fern fronds / outside their fog-blurred windows
Record of Demolition
by Nianxi Chen, translated from the Chinese by L. B. Tsau
Morning headaches are set to blow up my brain / The extra gift of great machines
Cowards
by Siamak Vossoughi
It seemed like it was always Matt Eastman fighting somebody or Matt Ladreau fighting somebody or the two of them fighting each other.
What the Wire Hangers Say
by Kate Peper
Over and over / our thin necks / hang the likeness / of your unfilled / body // We’ve known you for so long / We just want // to get closer
At Once Sealed and Soluble
by Will Russo
Evergreen is bone and pigment. Grows projectile out of ground. / Boughs snapped for thick blood. Resin drains from once-limbs / like beads of paint—is this rumor?
Soliloquy For You If You Ever Heal
by Abigail Chang
You shear coconut until it glistens translucent. / I Barbie your limbs & think about barbecuing ribs. I nurse // tender childhoods & drizzle ketchup on pizza. You are you and I am misguided.
Shedding
by C. Kubasta
He could imagine the way the metal-hitting-wood would echo through the darkened rooms in the middle of the night, bouncing off the worn wooden floors from downstairs to upstairs, her body tensing in the bed beside him.