Selected Poetry by Hannan Khan

Photo Source: Unsplash

Future’s Grime Bloom

she buds the throb in compost bin — banana skins curled like adrift glossas

soaked condoms, cracked cell screens, moss-bitten motherboard of her last beau

wires haemorrhage into roots; roots into reminiscences; reminiscences feed marigolds

she voices to beetles in code of senescent browsers; lures hornets with static, gulps the

bucketing wrung from cloud server smoke; she recites under sundered satellite

hair plaited with amping cables; thighs tattooed with last week’s headlines

once a dude left her a usb amore note engraved in the dirt beside a fig tree

she chewed it in half; data leaked honeyed on her fungiform

she frenches her tomatoes at aurora; each one sprouted from blackout seeds

hacked from government silos, pollinated by bees attuned on face recognition

now she fruits nectarines with solar dermas; they pulse with light at twilight;

hum softly when clutched; blueberries ciphered with ancestral melodies play lullabies if crushed

her peaches spliced with cryptogram, sync ovulation with lunar downloads

dulcitude & algorithmic; cherubs come for fruits & elope with secrets

no one solicits why she inhumes routers under her lettuces

her carcass glitches when she moans; sometimes she moans for hours; sometimes she doesn’t

she fucked a windmill once and laboured a turbine

the garden, gooey with respiration; the zephyr, lubed with jasmine & machine calor

what perishes here resurrects through wire; through worm; through wet; through want

hope isn’t pristine, it ferments; her litanies are malware to hoary world

her guffaw short-circuits the sol; she fathoms what cultivates in her soil:

not salvation; not redemption; but future’s grime bloom; pink-veined

& sweating in the guts of putrefaction; she tarries with a trowel & open jaws

Baptism In Ambrosia

pristine aqua was hot but not holy; he scrubbed lip prints off his collarbone with loofah she bestowed him; soap foamed like remorse — slithery, persistent, sisyphean to seize; his dermis metamorphosed into red, then redder, but sin doesn’t bleed, it contuses; he washed off the scent of her hands with her lavender wash; it perfumed like repentance — floral & forgettable; her helix whispered his sobriquet; his neck reminisced hers; mouth to mouth; mouth to memoir; she didn’t moan, he avowed; & still mirror fogged & still steam soared & still he bathed until baptized felt like another lie wearing ambrosia

Hannan Khan — a nefelibata, poet, fiction writer, editor, and scholar of literature & linguistics from Pakistan. He combs through moments of love, death, delirium & relational complexities, seraphically tracing what’s breathed and what flickers unbreathed. He is the winner of the Native Voices Award 2025 for his poetry collection Isn't Cooked Is Cursed. When he craves reprieve, he devours dark thrillers like he’s dissecting crime scenes — psychological, raw, unpredictable. He sips coffee & reads Manto. His work has appeared in IHRAM Literary Magazine, Graveside Press, SpecPoVerse, Eye To The Telescope, Abyss & Apex, The Headlight Review, The Literary Hatchet, Winds Of Asia, Zoetic Press & Uncanny Magazine and is forthcoming in Native Voices Anthology. For a glimpse into his life, find him on Instagram: @hannan.khan.official

If you would like ot learn more about Hannan, you can find him on the following social media sites:

Facebook: Hannan.Khan.Official

Twitter: @HannanKhanOff

Bluesky: @hannankhanofficial