"Publishing is a small pond but it is full of Pirhanas"
Jhilam Chattaraj: Congratulations on receiving the Pushcart Prize nomination. How important are such honours in a poet’s life?
Dustin Pickering: Thank you, Jhilam! Awards can bring underrated writers to the spotlight and offer them opportunities. An award can also encourage...
MANNEQUIN
It wants to be alive, to know sense and have lucid dreams. However, the possibility of a lone storefront mannequin awakening is a dream. Frozen in the bright neon of the city lights, unable to motion her wants or needs, the mannequin remains silent.
Yet even the impossible things can...
hand washing
apples are crimson
like the faces of children
who exit their births
breathing as fire, raptured by still tears.
she was a silence of horror
the venom of encroachment
tearing up
like wind
a tunnel of thought
I am only left to this fanatical
flaw
centuries of madness, tearing at the curtains.
like Shakespeare’s army ants
actors in drag, frightened wraiths
isolated...