Anis Shivani
Excerpted from "Feather" published in The Aleph Review Vol. 1 (2017)
My Mexico City, my Berlin, my Shanghai!
I dreamed them all up, drowned businessmen bloated
like cuttlefish in rivers of sludge, streamlined
phone companies, housewives on drugs,
the only patterns of ecstasy I want to memorise.
Dream with me, fanatic in pinstripes,
dream the dream of dying by a dying fire.
As for habits, I like to tramp through evening
woods, Stevens in my pocket, gazing at fallen
branches and streams going nowhere, with an
actor’s verified trust in having earned my pay.
Anis Shivani is a fiction writer, poet, and critic based in Houston, Texas. His debut poetry book, My Tranquil War and Other Poems, was released by NYQ Books and his other works include the story collection, The Fifth Lash and Other Stories, released by C&R Press (it was also longlisted for the Frank O’Connor Short Story Award). My Tranquil War and Other Poems received advance praise from Franz Wright, Eileen Myles, Fady Joudah, Marilyn Hacker, Kevin Prufer, Campbell McGrath, Michael McClure and others. Anis’s other books include Anatolia and Other Stories (2009) and Soraya: Sonnets (2016). His work has appeared in Prairie Schooner, AGNI, Epoch, Fence, Boulevard, Pleiades, Denver Quarterly, Georgia Review, The Iowa Review, Michigan Quarterly Review, Antioch Review, Subtropics, Green Mountains Review, Puerto del Sol, Colorado Review, The Huffington Post,
Times Literary Supplement, London Magazine and Cambridge Quarterly, amongst others.
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