One Poem by Fizza Abbas

 

The world is a word salad where I am an orange cabbage

I feel like congealed blood of a moth spilling spindly legs laughing at my ass calling me a 

laughing maniac it doesn’t know different blood carapace skeletons in corners entrails in petri 

dishes bones flying smoking with the blow of windows wanting to escape graveyards statues 

long gone a world making sense for some spilling secrets for the rest a laughing woman lipstick

smeared yes the plastic smile yes the bones yes the world burns at spirit seconds yes it’s all 

going to ruins you dug out civilizations once sunken cities archaeologists now we are all 

archaeologists digging our own graves from within we don’t want to bury our hands in the sand 

but there’s no choice it’s never us vs them it’s us with our old versions ye verily ole nincompoop 

your old French who tortured Algeria and left half a million corpses your old Germans who 

bathed Europe in blood your Japanese burnt alive in Hiroshima and Nagasaki two hundred 

thousand dead glowing under mushroom clouds your Koreans three million split by the forty 

eighth parallel bones scattered in rice paddies your Vietnamese two to three million swallowed 

in napalm and Agent Orange your Iraqis one to two million crushed under shock and awe your 

Afghans two hundred thousand bombed droned starved your Kenyans herded into camps 

twenty thousand whipped and executed your Indians starved three million in Bengal while 

empire feasted your Congolese ten million hacked and worked to death under Leopold’s rubber 

thirst your Guatemalans two hundred thousand disappeared into mass graves your Chileans 

tortured electrocuted vanished in the night your Libyans thirty thousand blown apart under 

intervention your Yemenis three hundred seventy seven thousand erased by blockade airstrikes 

famine your Gazans tens of thousands crushed under rubble whole families smeared into dust 

how ignorant you me all of us we are idiots we the journalists what the fuck can we change on 

ground or through correspondents whose press badges lie buried under debris of salvaged 

selves songs of resistance what change will they bring will they make the killing mongers the 

giant motherfucking bastards wear necklaces of gold instead of rage will they stop this rampage 

not for God not for prophecies but for themselves oh you believe so huh if you want to enjoy 

making those pink barbie doll castles and living in them with your children selves oh look at this 

plastic doll I made her wear clothes oh so pretty aww she looks like a doll oh wasn’t she before 

oh I combed her golden tresses ah that trolley oh that pram crammed with stiff plastic babies 

their eyelids painted shut their bodies cold hollow rattles inside them oh that food basket stuffed 

with yellow marbles pretending to be corn kernels rolling out like diseased teeth a crooked red 

shard standing in for a carrot sharp enough to slit your palm and oh those green chewed up 

bubblegums pressed into cabbage leaves cauliflower heads foaming like skulls sprayed with 

spit comic relief pauses for a story that you want to make believe in your make believe where 

there are fine dandy people lying naked on beaches in Tel Aviv sipping cold beers the foam 

spilling onto their suntanned chests sunglasses tilted at the edges of their noses sand sticking 

like sugar to oiled legs oh those fuckers ruined our good prime time show oh please change the 

channel everything is perfect the waves slap politely against the piers yachts gleam like teeth 

under the sun barbecues crackle with skewers dripping fat and someone laughs with a mouth 

full of shrimp cocktail and red wine stains their gums oh let me drink gulps and gulps of water 

from our imported bottles the plastic crinkling like brittle bones in my fists and ah why hamburger 

why not stack it higher with bacon grease dripping down wrists oh you silly bibi paint your mouth 

red again fix your hair again work more on your PR honey for prophecy’s sake darling smile

wider for the cameras and hey you the guardian reporter tilt your lens just so catch the sparkle 

not the smoke keep the angles clean no rubble creeping in oh no no no no candid shots of egg 

shells scattered with ash no splintered toys half buried in dust no bombs please they splatter my 

mascara they ruin my eyes

Fizza Abbas is a writer based in Karachi, Pakistan. She is fond of poetry and music. Her work has appeared in more than 100 journals, both online and in print. Her work has also been nominated for Best of The Net and shortlisted for Oxford Brookes International Poetry Competition 2021.