This poem was published in Vagabonds: Anthology of the Mad Ones:
http://www.vagabondsink.com/#!archives/cb37

Transcript:

i wish we were in the same psych ward

i wish we were in the same psychward
		so we could scream our way through the windows
	so i could kiss you when the staff weren't looking
    an interchange of smile to chickened breath
fallout sincere, an epicentre emerged

	you submerge me, and i will swallow
		all the fucking pills and we could yell
		    for the nurse to fucking hurry up
		  with our commodified drugs

i wish we were in the same psychward
	so we could push notes through the walls
	    draw tattoos on our feet
		butter the puffs of bread
			one for the other

rotten regurgitated stains on our sheets
		fabric to remember
	sign our names into cheap collages
	       throw cups of juice down the hall
		tear rifts in the furniture

i wish we were in the same psychward
      so you'd know the mingle of this scar
           front to center, this isn't your mug shot
                but i want to remember you

i wish we were in the same psychward

This poem appeared in the August 2016 issue of Before I Leave zine: http://www.beforeileavezine.com/#!lover-listen-by-shana-bulhan-haydock/c1wqv

Transcript:

lover, listen:

I let the “real” cat catch the mouse. I held onto some vague hope
you would devour raspberries off my still-trodden frame.

You were the snow devoid of footprints, the still-shaking aftermath
I would then reveal, all curtains awry, spangles and shame cast
to wood: dust, fragment, melancholy, retroactive shine.

My song, my lover, my ankles turned inward.
I still whisper when you don’t text me back. I still manipulate
these sneaking crumbs of earwax and snot. 
Be the Q-tip that finds that deepest itch. 

I am pulling hairs out. I am pulling skin apart. This perpetuated scab.
Sometimes you just have to scream down slides.
Be the red coat. Be the red scarf. Be the red beret. Love me anyway,
microscopes be damned.

lover, listen:

This poem appeared in the zine "I Want You To See This Before I Leave" in October 2016. http://www.beforeileavezine.com/for-you--me--other-qtpoc-by-shana-bu

Transcript:

for you & me & other qtpoc


dream on      my apple tree
my false cobblestone, no        we use this to encircle
my swinging child my checkered flounce


we sleek past each other         never met, never meet        
you are my throbbing temples      mechanical wind sweeping a glare
i’m cold but i want to be colder           


you spin the sun      i will disappear into 
your curlicue of chain smoke.


us queers of colour 
our glasses are round and square, cat-eyed and piqued.
curls on arms & big black rims. globes made neat. stylized maroon.
velvet cats & theory tomes. 

we are not forbidden we are not wanted.


just tell me if you’d like to      burrow inside a cave of forts
i’ve wanted just to touch fingertips beyond
protracted patterns


i’ve wanted just to let our hair mix
black & brown & maybe sparkles too
nestle in our soft or dry or scaly expanse of skin


(maybe you’re in baltimore, no, texas now. or is it baltimore again?
i wish i lived in a city that sounded as pretty as baltimore.
but i know it’s more than that.       more than your snatched phone,
or your poem about the uprising or        every “keep reading” tumblr post)


it’s mourning somewhere & saturday
i need to find you dancing in the monsoon

for you & me & other qtpoc

This poem appeared in the Voices de Queer Femmes Anthology in November 2016. https://www.facebook.com/TheVigilCenterfortheArts/

Transcript:

bedroom strip club

take one;
please wax away
the regular (conscious other realm) 
semi-involuntary semi-conscious 
undiagnosed stoppable shameful 
neuro-
-logical fitlike thinglike 
things
sometimes excitable until— 
(they stopped me) 
everything is studded 
with pill dust
careful-careful-careful-
… in-the-psychwards 

take two;
i put on a red necklace, 
ignore yet clutch the sexy bra strap 
threatening to slip more, 
the nudge to adjust. wanna
compare? the sex of an orgasm one night 
& the tears of it the other afternoon.  
mechanical fingers and sparse leg hair, 
too long and dark to remain
a polaroid romance. 

take three; 
an already obscene hand contorts.
 a laterally opposite sloping script,
bled purple. 

take four; 
welcome to the land of toenail flakes,
old and grey the way white feet never are. 
the blur of the boil of a big toe, and the 
dried carcasses of cuticles— their own
family tree of sieved, strained
veins. 

take five; 
my lips are plump and 
my eyebrows are telltales as 
my head is squeezed into spaces too big
 +
be a painting, but paintings have pretty folds,
 and breasts that know what to do. 

take six;
 meet me on the wire, that clowned 
decadence where we are 
all a picture of forgotten forgetting

bedroom strip club

This poem appeared in the Voices de Queer Femmes Anthology in November 2016. www.facebook.com/TheVigilCenterfortheArts/

femme and don't I know it

I’m a sophisticate:
neat and thrifted,
found-for-free.

a hat over an almost-shaved head 
such neat rebellion: 
picking at a fruit tart with a fork 
abandoning the instrument
savage brown hands scrambling crumbs 
licking off my thumb, 
“we don’t do that here” 
balanced against 
“this is a [white] thing” 
I daintily lick the cream and sugar, 
brown and high femme 
with sticky hands. 

and did you know 
this dressy plaid skirt is a sports skirt 
for the sports I never play.

femme and don't I know it

This poem appeared in the Voices de Queer Femmes Anthology in November 2016. www.facebook.com/TheVigilCenterfortheArts/

finding

here i am, me in my sweaty 
white-inner-lining black bra 
thin cotton underwear 
hairs poking out, chewed peeled 
cuticles. scabbed wrists. dirt 
at the corner of my toenails
dried hairspray and eyelashes 
fallen, stale mascara, stollen crust

wondering if you 
ever have stubbly legs too, 
stubbly arms and stubbly legs 
to match a stubbly upper lip. 
or do you always float
constantly smooth moisture
dry not showing up 
on whiter skin.

do you sleep in
starched remains or soft 
cashmere and satin, or embroidered,
patterned, muslin shifts;
do you simply have to stir your cereal idly 
to be a photograph;
do you feel your skin pulling 
or does it simply grow.

here i am	here are you
here you are	here am i.
hear me 	you say 
hear me 	i say 
hear me 	here.

did you clutch 
your armpit hair too; 
did you wonder if it was curlier 
or longer than other people’s.
do you smell your fingertips
wonder whether someone told you 
what smelled good and what smelled bad

do you notice the difference in shade 
between two gold glistening objects.
do you paint with your fingers 
and destroy paintbrushes?

finding

This poem appeared in The Nilgiri Wagon in January 2017.

Transcript:

grief

I stood there, awash with
sand dunes I never visit

one foot twisted inside of itself:
coquette, doll-thing.

my father's words washed over me,
this script my antique.
I have not bothered to learn
the lost pages between us

grief

This poem appeared in The Nilgiri Wagon in January 2017.

Transcript:

nostalgia

my father draws wires above my head, 
plastic coating don't touch. 
all this cheap red yellow blue and then 
thin metal escapes: frayed snakes.
I guess he's immune but not me.

I want to write the scenery of Chandigarh
but I already forget. hapless dung piles and soil 
blend into Hyderabad. 

I want to be shivering again 
at the bus stop in my Vivek school blazer, 
marveling at wisps 
of breath in the cold fog. 
and now I don’t need a hat, no;
thin tights are enough.

I want J pushing and hitting me against thin leather.
(later he also throws desk corks at me) 
I want to argue again, over up top 
in the side front seat with P. 
I want to be hot as flies again 
on rudimentary festival red carpet. 

and I'm so glad I never have to go through any of it ever again.

nostalgia

This poem appeared in Issue 2 of The Felt, in January 2017. http://www.thefelt.org/issues/2/shana_haydock.htm

Transcript:

How to Get Into a Psych Ward

What if you learned to desecrate yourself at the hands of the state? 
He had to pretend he was poisoned by the Queen of England. 

We have to be TV antiheroes. 

I don't need a gurney or white sheets, I mean, yes I do. 
Walk in and sometimes they think you're crazy and sometimes they think you're a silly girl. 
You're lucky but... 
On some level, there is no difference between an EMT and a police officer.
Here are the squat packs. Air & blood, no, no blood. Never any blood. 
I asked an EMT if I was going to die. He barely answered, said he didn't know. 

Fifteen with the stockings in the snow. Blue, blue jacket-- discarded in college. 
There are lights everywhere in this aftermath of not-dying.

How to Get Into a Psych Ward

This poem appeared in Issue 2 of The Felt, in January 2017. www.thefelt.org/issues/2/shana_haydock.htm

Transcript:

& so i loved another white man


i don't want anything but 


the fight underwater     the haloes of layered hair 
     the imaginary video footage            the fingers up 
against each other          the flying birds in the lamplight 
     the diving into my belly button         
                                                      no, no. 

     the burn     the onslaught
the leaking snot on my face as i kiss you            goodnight dear 
goodnight darling.        nothing but fingers deep inside 
               you wrestling your whiteness out         
          a sword of a lining     a last shuddering squelch.

& so i loved another white man

This poem appeared in Reservoir Lit, Issue 4. http://reservoirlit.com/haydock

Transcript:

de / sex (ed)

with him you are a bridge in a bathtub     you are exposed genitals     you are plump and suffocated in a free-binned shirt     you are a black towel cut into strips     thank you for the warm tea and bath he says     you are an anus poked twice without consent     you are too afraid to stay and be raped     you are climbing out of the bathtub     you are shuddering on your bed     you will forfeit this transitional housing apartment far too soon     a policeman accosts you at a downtown bus stop     he demands records from the sexual health clinic

on some level i understand the desire to kill yr rapist     smash of concrete against a face     enough times that you eviscerated your parents     i wish you were dead! i hate you! iI want to kill you!     enough temptation to allow my fingers the breathing room of their necks     so many agatha christie mysteries with paint-splattered murders     or heads held down bobbing for apples     the thrill of a quartered and drawn crucifixion     the squeal of flesh coerced against serrated cogs     on some level i. understand this fantasy of closure, anticlimactic     the edge you call psychosis sometimes i want to slip you a machete     i know you would always cower     you call this your salvation

shana

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