Gnashing Teeth Publishing

| words that get in your teeth

Book-Demon Questers by Hibah Shabkhez

Book-Demon Questers

We are drawn to dragonblaze shadows,
Moths to candles’ skin-toasting frolics,
For the seed of ruth that within glows
Enduring foul clementine colics

Tumour-like through blood and bone it spreads,
The hunger for peaches seen entire
In a husk-vale of dragon fire

We stumble thus to the demon’s lair,
And into the dread cavern we plunge;
Raise our quills high upon the prayer:
‘May we draw story-blood as we lunge!’

Tumour-like through blood and bone it treads,
The quest for book-demons set afire
In smashed flowers of a city-mire

~

Hibah Shabkhez is a writer of the half-yo literary tradition, an erratic language-learning enthusiast, a teacher of French as a foreign language and a happily eccentric blogger from Lahore, Pakistan. Her work has previously appeared in the Rockford Review, Qwerty, The Blue Nib, Ligeia, Cordite Poetry, Headway Quarterly and a number of other literary magazines. Studying life, languages and literature from a comparative perspective across linguistic and cultural boundaries holds a particular fascination for her.

Blog: https://hibahshabkhezxicc.wordpress.com/
Twitter: @hibahshabkhez
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/hibahshabkhezsarusaihiryu/
Instagram: @shabkhez_hibah

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