a shot of delight
being carded again
at the liquor store

1 senryu

Reunion

We meet again after
years of failed relationships
with strangers—you, now
grey, griping about knees
aching, while I’m fat
and gassy, my irritable
bowels expounded
in excruciating detail... 

3 Poems

discarded laundry 
the life-changing magic
of giving up

...
some clever puns about shots of serotonin or electro-
convulsive shocks to stimulate their flaccid brains
to desire screwing in a lightbulb in the first place,
...

How many depressed people does it take to screw in a lightbulb? 

...
You are hidden beneath
the horizon, sediment between
the bones of drowned whales.
...

Things Lost at Sea

Remembrance Day
boxes bursting with poppies
as we forget

November 11

Examine fungating mass with clinical detachment.
Fortify self with humility. Harden skin
(consider alcohol).
Sterilise with anti-septic skepticism.

Cut deeply.

...

How to Save a Shitty Draft

regret—
the weight 
on my bathroom scale


day off at last
long-awaited tryst
with my book in bed

2 senryu

The children play hide and seek
in the park where the sun
slips like egg yolk into
the sparkling bowl of the lake.

...

Hide and Seek

a hospital bed steeped in
ammonia currents of
stale urine
 
a tube of canesten straddling
the commode atop
a stack of unused diapers

fruit flies metastasizing from
browning bananas to
a half-empty bottle of lactulose

...

things you left behind

When they told me that
you had died,
I tried to recall your face.
But time had stolen your features and
left a haze
shimmering like a mirage
at the end of a scorched highway.

...

Elegy for my Aunt

little girl waits alone
abandoned parking lot is bruised
with puddles



under streetlights
burning

               the snowflakes

2 haiku

2 Poems

The night has cast its nets o’er city streets
And caught for me no dreams nor even sleep,
But stars that teem like fish in sable seas
And boughs – the weaving corals of the deep.

...

Mihan Han

Selected work