top of page
Season 5_leaves_pink.png

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

bottom of page