Artwork © Ira Joel Haber

 

this is the simple act of doing

Dragged              down
       my trilby
over my face
          shape-shifting
imagine Prometheus tied to this chair

bouncing on a bus from Babylon to Bangkok a foreigner

holding my tongue above the thrum
       and the whiff of piss beyond the broken door below

shapeshifter
           an angel pulled me from hell
         when poison filled my belly
three days in bed with bottled water hoping
           death wouldn’t find me and laugh at my flowery hat

because I’m too old for hats

and cracks where silky black snakes creep

 

Roberta Francis is a trans poet/novelist living in London who hashad some poems published in various magazines including Oddball.

Ira Joel Haber was born and lives in Brooklyn. He is a sculptor, painter, writer, book dealer, photographer and teacher. His work has been seen in numerous group shows both in the USA and Europe and he has had nine one man shows including several retrospectives of his sculpture. His work is in the collections of The Whitney Museum Of American Art, New York University, The Guggenheim Museum, The Hirshhorn Museum,The Albright-Knox Art Gallery & The Allen Memorial Art Museum. Since 2006 His paintings, drawings, photographs and collages have been published in over 300 online and print magazines. He has received three National Endowment for the Arts Fellowships, two Creative Artists Public Service Grant (CAPS) two Pollock-Krasner grants, two Adolph Gottlieb Foundation grants and, in 2010, he received a grant from Artists’ Fellowship Inc. in 2017 & 2018 he received the Brooklyn Arts Council SU-CASA artist-in-residence grant.