‘Liwat’ by Imran Khan

You strung them up together,

A constellation of sin,

Black suns, primitive blurs, counterparts to our purity,

As if humanity turns inside

Out by a type of love you won’t accept. You can’t

Repress this urge for beauty killed. It’s

Become impossible to pray

On shrouds of your unholiness. I see you now, erosion

Of piety and violence, offering

Faulty supplication

With your flesh washed,

Palms upturned, body bent. You spiral

The miserable bottom, flourishing in a

Child’s game of concealment. Your

Hateful smile of knife, fluid in sin,

That terrified moist heat you bring,

I call that your God.

 

Poet’s Bio: Imran Khan is a poet and researcher who has worked with detainees and victims of war. His work has appeared or is forthcoming in the Thomas Hardy Journal, West Trade Review, The Bookends Review and others.

Khan has won a Thomas Hardy Award for poetry.

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