1 poem
by Shazia Hafiz Ramji
Shazia Hafiz Ramji (she/they) is a poet and writer who lives on the unceded territories of the Squamish, Musqueam, and Tsleil-Waututh peoples (Vancouver). She is the author of Port of Being and is at work on her first novel.
Tripping on Knights (Pandemic Weed Poem III)
Third week on Blue Dream a knight
under a tree thick sandy ponytail
swooping out his helmet like syrup
a curling hologram shimmering spindrift
so weird I stop tripping why
would I see a knight I expect my high
to be fractal and relevant chill
not ancient and colonial I fuck off
to my computer to find grandpoppy
in the microfiche in all the brown names
that have crimes and debts I find
grandpoppy’s father is a Sir was knighted
Order of the British Empire
and it pisses me off so much that I know
how poor Poppy was that the knighthood
makes nothing of him or him or him or me
I am sick and haunted can’t stop
finding long-dead men the first
in my family to draw all the names
together only to find our blood
is a little bit white what the hell
does it matter if I got a transfusion
we’d all still be from somewhere else
I just want to live can the Queen
please give my family money so I can buy
Maltesers and Ableton not trip on knights please