Flayed: Heuristic Halo Press May 2025

Heuristic Halo Press is a gorgeous online literary magazine out of Myanmar (Burma). I'm honored to have my poem Flayed appearing in this issue, which was a call for poets and artists to respond to "the urge and the act of going against forces that dictate what we think and do -- More specifically, art with the themes of resistance, defiance, rebellion, liberation and transcendence."

You will find Flayed a bit of an odd, and perhaps even disturbing, poem. You may not notice straight off that it is written in monorhyme -- one rhyme sound on every other line through the whole poem. That's a rhyme scheme first popularized (as far as we know) by the early 6th century Arabic writers, particularly those writing the M'uallaqat, a set of qasidas (a specific form of narrative ode) which are the crown jewel of pre-Islamic Arabic poetry. I wrote my MFA Critical Thesis on the M'uallaqat,, and have been exploring monorhyme and various Arabic meters and other poetic devices ever since. This one has a rather simple, standard meter though, four feet per line.

And speaking of feet, what is with this whole flaying thing? On the one hand, it raises very Baudelairean (is that a word) responses of disgust and horror -- emotions rarely explored in poetry, probably because, well, they are disgusting and horrible. On the other hand, it's a way to tell that the poem is not AI-generated. :)

What's it's really about is exposing your inner self -- and having people ignore you (an all-too-familiar occurrence for us women of a certain age), turn away, and not even attempt to understand. It also is about how we are all alike on the inside, same bones, same muscles, and that external skin, no matter its color, state of shaving, scarring, freckles or age spots, holds our bodies together, but also keeps others out -- and others respond to what that skin looks like rather than what's on the inside.

I hope you will explore this whole big beautiful issue of Heuristic Halo Press!