Smog City

Misha Anwar Misha Anwar’s poem ‘Smog City’ attempts to delve into the complexity of living in and loving a city that has suffered civil turbulence and toxic decay for decades. 

Where the Hours Stretch by Abdul Wahab

Please take your shoes off at the door, I’ll grab your coat

And you can remove your resentment, here I’ll put it on the mantle

Don’t forget to take it with you on the way out

God knows the air here is already bitter to the taste.

Please make yourselves comfortable

I have redecorated every stone, brick and bone

Wrung the blood from the corners of my mouth

And trimmed every loose-leafed tree

All this just to make you feel at home.

Home; in this bruised, butchered, buzz-cut, behemoth;

This charred, stepped-on, crumpled, centipede of a city

Home; my home is yours and yours is mine and my home is haunted

How can I tell, you ask?

Well, if you can call a place a place then you can call a ghost a ghost.

And if you look closely on the ground beneath your feet,

You’ll see the broken strands of pig-tail hair,

From when the children would play 

Before this paper-thin playground town fell in on itself.

Every path hereon is meant to be prowled in pain 

The only way out is on all fours,

Crouched and cowered, dyed in the dirt that our elders died for

As the smell of yesterday’s jilted jasmines seeps through your porous sieve-skin

And the taste of a scream settles in your teeth

You can reach for the broken hairs and beg the girl

Or beg the god

But you can’t escape a haunting.

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Misha Anwar having graduated from King’s College London, is an aspiring writer. Her work explores themes of loss memory and displacement.

Abdul Wahab (b. 1999, Lahore, Pakistan) is a Lahore-based visual artist. He earned his bachelor’s degree in Fine Arts, with a major in Painting, from the National College of Arts, Lahore. His creative process focuses on capturing the idea of how one's personal space and serves as a window into their emotional states, experiences, and sense of identity. His work has been showcased at Ejaz art gallery and degree show 2024, national college of arts.

Artwork, image and information about artist are courtesy of Gallery Numaish Gah, Lahore. An exhibit featuring this artist’s work is up at the time of publishing.