They
were not savage, just satirical. Not
packed with sad similes or
obscure images, throbbing with tension.

Pure and harmless, they
sent no message, signaled nothing
No one would care anyway
No one would read them.

I lived alone in a shabby rented house
at 13/A Bangshi road.
Late at night, when sleep eluded me,
I wrote poems.

Pacing up and down
the lonely dark corridors, I
recited them out loud, the
only audience was my cat, Hulu.

When charges were brought
complaints lodged. And they called my poems blasphemous
hurting mass feelings, my surprise was
as big as Mount Karakoram.

Shackled and sentimental, I
write poems on the dusty walls
of the prison cell, they
are read by thousands of prisoners with great sadness.

They call my poems, revolutionary
Me—a true poet, giving voice to the voiceless.
At last life makes sense, I write
in a half-finished poem, while awaiting the verdict.

Marzia Rahman’s poems and flashes have appeared in WOC This Way For Poetry, Chewers and Masticadors, 101 Words, Postcard Shorts, Potato Soup Journal, Five of the Fifth, The Voices Project, Fewerthan500.com, The Dribble Drabble Literary Review, Paragraph Planet, Six Sentences, Academy of the Heart and Mind, Writing Places Anthology and Flash Fiction Festival Four. Marzia received a nomination for Best Microfiction 2023.